OpenPlotter - Searching for peripherals

[st599]

Hi all,

Interested in people's experiences in using a Raspberry Pi and OpenPlotter/OpenCPN. We've recently had an out-of-manufacture chartplotter break and I'm finding the information on the OpenPlotter site slightly confusing/incomplete.

Has anyone managed to get the program to run on a newer Raspberry Pi 4 using the oesENC charts that you can purchase at https://o-charts.org/shop/en/8-oesenc? Which 12v screens and Pi Cases do members use (probably around 12-14")?

We already have quite a few sensors on board and an AIS transceiver, all of which are multiplexed on to high-speed RS422 using a TackTick multiplexor and displayed using the chart plotter we're replacing. I'm assuming that the multiplexed data stream will still work with the new OpenPlotter set up. What High-speed RS422-USB converters do people suggest using?

Currently we have a Garmin rail-mount GPS antenna - can anyone suggest a similar USB device compatible for use with the OpenPlotter setup?

I would also like to set up an external rail-mount WiFi antenna for connecting to Marina WiFi, and an internal WiFi antenna for the crew to connect to to:
a) share the Marina WiFi
b) share data from OpenPlotter to crew and skipper's smartphones.
Is this possible in OpenPlotter, is it easy to use? Can anyone recommend an external antenna? If we do put Navigation and AIS data on the internal WiFi, are there any recommended 'phone apps for displaying the data?

How useful are the add on boards I can see on sites like Banggood which measure temperature/humidty/pressure and yaw/roll/pitch? Is there an easy to use electronic compass?

We are also contemplating buying a RADAR in future - does the OpenCPN Radar plug-in work well? Does it limit the list of Radars that can be bought.

I'm hoping to use NodeRed and MQTT to set up some reporting of where the boat has been, engine hours etc. And extend in future to include fuel and water tank statuses, battery status etc.

Finally, is there a method of safe shutdown via a GPIO button available? Not sure all our skippers would shutdown the Pi correctly. Even better, a UPS which initiates a save and shutdown on a power loss of greater than say 30 secs.

S

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by st599

Hi all,

Currently we have a Garmin rail-mount GPS antenna - can anyone suggest a similar USB device compatible for use with the OpenPlotter setup?

Anything supported by gpsd binary formats or nmea0183.

I would also like to set up an external rail-mount WiFi antenna for connecting to Marina WiFi, and an internal WiFi antenna for the crew to connect to to:
a) share the Marina WiFi
b) share data from OpenPlotter to crew and skipper's smartphones.
Is this possible in OpenPlotter, is it easy to use? Can anyone recommend an external antenna? If we do put Navigation and AIS data on the internal WiFi, are there any recommended 'phone apps for displaying the data?

You can use opencpn on phone for AIS. Look for alfa and similar high powered usb antenna. I use special scripts to get the best signal rather than network manager.

How useful are the add on boards I can see on sites like Banggood which measure temperature/humidty/pressure and yaw/roll/pitch? Is there an easy to use electronic compass?

Yes, suggest mpu9255.

Finally, is there a method of safe shutdown via a GPIO button available? Not sure all our skippers would shutdown the Pi correctly. Even better, a UPS which initiates a save and shutdown on a power loss of greater than say 30 secs.

S

This is outside the scope of openplotter, check raspberry pi forums, but not difficult to set up. Also ups for pi exists. I considered a solution using ultra capacitors since you only need in most cases a few seconds. This is generally not a huge issue.

The other way is to mount filesystem readonly at boot, and use usb drive for home partition.