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merrimac · 10-03-2016, 08:22

Oh and a final comment for today -- adding VRM / EBL is pretty easy and will be accomplished at some time. MARPA however is a whole different ballgame, and needs some (very) heavy lifting, and probably won't be feasible given our available development capacity.

ve7mdl · 10-03-2016, 21:39

Thanks Håkan and Merrimac for the updates and information. This is really an amazing plugin and I look forward to getting my boat away from the marina so I can run the radar though its paces.

About MARPA - I have used it on a couple of boats and pondered the logic. I would probably put a window around a selected target and try to see how it moves within that window in a minute or so, but you'd have to trust the heading data quite a lot. The course and speed calculation should be trivial. The part that is non-trivial is to keep track of targets that are marginal in signal or one you lose periodically because your boat is pitching and rolling.

At least one of the radars I used did not have a heading sensor, but got its track data from the GPS - amazingly, MARPA worked even in a sloppy sea!

Cheers, ....Erik.
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SJH · 11-03-2016, 05:24

Hi. I'm trying to get the BR24 plugin to work with a new B&G 4G scanner but can't get any data from it. The plugin can see the radar but shows the amber light, not the green. All of the other requirements are set correctly, Open GL etc.

At one point it showed a message about UDP.

My setup is OpenCPN on Windows 10 and I have the scanner connected directly to the PC's ethernet port.

Any advice appreciated. Many thanks, Simon.

merrimac · 11-03-2016, 05:37

Hm, opencpn.org is down so I can't check the doc whether this is already mentioned, but you may want to disable your firewall to check whether that fixes it.

If the status dialog shows the radar IP address this means it's receiving (status report) data correctly. It is highly unlikely that it can receive the target multicast address for the status reports but not the slightly different address for radar data.

Do you hear the radar spinning up when you ask for transmit?
What happens if you click the radar icon?

You are using v1.3.1 I hope?

You can stop OpenCPN, set the loglevel in the ini file to 1 (or higher) and then try again. You should see a message reporting in the logfile that it sent a radar on command:

BR24radar_pi: Turn radar 0 on (send TRANSMIT request)

SJH · 11-03-2016, 06:35

Thanks very much.

Windows firewall is off.

I don't seem to have a button to tell it to transmit. When I click on the radar plugin icon, I get a control panel up and at the top it says 'Radar A - Stby'. It does look like the scanner hasn't been asked to transmit.

I can't find the ini file. Where should it be?

merrimac · 11-03-2016, 06:49

The OpenCPN about box gives the location for ini and log file.

merrimac · 11-03-2016, 07:20

In 1.3.1 there is no explicit "turn on / off" button on the radar control dialog, you just press the radar icon in the toolbar. Try clicking that and observing the logfile with the BR24 loglevel = 1 (edit the ini file, hunt for the section for the radar. There's all sorts of goodies there that we haven't added to the GUI as you won't need them often.)

SJH · 11-03-2016, 08:03

Thanks, again.

Log file seems to show the radar being detected and it reporting things like it changing its range but no data is being received. I think I can see the transmit request: Turn radar 0 on (send TRANSMIT request), but no packets are received.

I tried setting up a connection in OpenCPN but that didn't have any effect. I may not have done that correctly - I tried setting it to the IP address shown in the radar info and selecting Ethernet and UDP.

I don't hear anything going on in the scanner but I shouldn't, should I? I didn't think it has any moving parts.

bcn · 11-03-2016, 08:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by SJH

Thanks very much.

I can't find the ini file. Where should it be?

C:\Program Data\opencpn\

C: if your program data are in C:
Program data will have a different name depending on the language of the install.

In case you can't see the directory disable in View of the file Explorer the option that system files should be hidden.

Douwe Fokkema · 11-03-2016, 08:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by SJH

Thanks very much.

Windows firewall is off.

I don't seem to have a button to tell it to transmit. When I click on the radar plugin icon, I get a control panel up and at the top it says 'Radar A - Stby'. It does look like the scanner hasn't been asked to transmit.

Have you tried the radar-only button? When you click the info button, what does the info window tell?
What is your location?

Douwe

ve7mdl · 11-03-2016, 21:59

I tried to update the plugin to 1.31 today, but the repository still contains 1.3.0. Is anyone planning on publishing the latest version to the Ubuntu 15.10 repository?

Cheers, ....Erik.
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SJH · 12-03-2016, 00:04

Thanks, Douwe

The Info box shows OpenGL checked, ZeroConf E'net 169.254.128.98, Radar present is checked, Radar sending data not checked. Position and Heading are checked. Variation is not. Stats show no packets or spokes.

The radar only/overlay button toggles between Radar Only, Head Up and Radar Overlay but nothing changes.

SJH · 12-03-2016, 00:04

I'm in the UK

merrimac · 12-03-2016, 01:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by ve7mdl

I tried to update the plugin to 1.31 today, but the repository still contains 1.3.0. Is anyone planning on publishing the latest version to the Ubuntu 15.10 repository?

Will ask Pavel, he is the only one that can do that.