Twocan - a new Plugin

[Tehani]

Originally Posted by stevead

Hi Hubert,
I'm sorry that not much has happened since you sent me your Actisense logs.


My biggest impediment besides time is simply that I do not own an NGT-1 with which I can develop or test against.
At the time I thought I coild simply use the Canboat code as a source, however the problem is a little more complex as the NGT-1 converts from NMEA 2000 to an Actisense proprietary format which means a separate parser is required to the NMEA 2000 parser in TwoCan.

Perhaps there should be a separate NGT-1 plugin implemented similarly to TwoCan. Another option to using the Canboat source code is to use the Actisense NGT-1 SDK which has a side benefit of making OpenCPN NMEA 2000 Certified!

Actisense cannot maintain N2k certification if it does not limit operations. Steve, if you keep moving forward you will reach a point where you will have to act directly on the ISO protocol and handle certain sensitive data.

José Luis

[stevead]

Originally Posted by Tehani

Actisense cannot maintain N2k certification if it does not limit operations. Steve, if you keep moving forward you will reach a point where you will have to act directly on the ISO protocol and handle certain sensitive data.

José Luis

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. The output from an Actisense NGT-1 doesn't require any low level handling of the NMEA 2000 or ISO data stream, in fact it is more the reverse.

The problem is simply that the NGT-1 is a "intelligent" device that performs the ISO address claim dance, responds to a few ISO queries and re-assembles NMEA 2000 fast message fragments all by itself. These are all functions that are performed by the TwoCan plugin and for that reason I decided that integrating support for the NGT-1 into TwoCan would require separate code paths which would increase the risk destabilising the code and causing regressions.

There is a separate Actisense plugin that has been languishing since the start of the year because I don't possess one to test against and that the results from the few people testing it have been inconclusive. Feel free to peruse the code on https://github.com/TwoCanPlugin/ActisensePlugin. Note that the Actisense plugin is based on an early version of the TwoCan plugin and therefore does not include the fixes to some of the NMEA 2000 parsing errors that were subsequently discovered and fixed.

At this point in time I am not going to revisit the Actisense code as I am busy finalising support for the inexpensive Rusoku Toucan adapter with the Mac OSX version of TwoCan and also adding support for the new OpenCPN Plugin Manager.

[SCarns]

Originally Posted by stevead

I am busy finalising support for the inexpensive Rusoku Toucan adapter with the Mac OSX version of TwoCan and also adding support for the new OpenCPN Plugin Manager.

I'm very excited to report my initial go with the Rusoku Toucan adapter on my Mac is a success. Needs some tweaking, but it works and is very fast! Looking forward to help develop this further.

Great job, Stevead!!!

[stevead]

Announcing TwoCan Version 1.9.

This version supports the OpenCPN 5.2 Plugin Manager which makes for a very simple installation for all users.

It also includes a few bug fixes for AIS messages and extends the Mac OSX version with support for the Rusoku Toucan CAN adapter.

Just to recap.
TwoCan is a very simple solution for integrating OpenCPN with modern NMEA 2000 systems. It supports most of the NMEA 2000 messages required for safe navigation: position, speed, depth, wind and AIS, plus a few others such as engine, tank levels and environment, which are directly incorporated into OpenCPN without the need for additional gateways or converters.

It runs on all of the supported OpenCPN platforms: Windows, Linux and Mac OSX and supports a variety of inexpensive CAN bus adapters.

On Linux it operates with any CAN bus adapter that supports the Linux Socket CAN interface. On Mac OSX it operates with either the Canable Cantact or Rusoku Toucan adapters and on Windows it operates with the Canable Cantact, Rusoku Toucan , Kvaser Leaflight and Aximotek AX92903 CAN bus adapters.

On all platforms it is also capable of recording and replaying NMEA 2000 log files in a variety of formats: TwoCan raw, Canboat, Candump (Linux utility) or Yacht Devices Voyage Data Recorder.

For more detailed information, there is a manual located on the OpenCPN Developer Guide

If you have any questions, please post on either this forum or send an email to twocanplugin@hotmail.com

Thanks.

[LennartG]

Thanks Steven,
installed on my virtual test machine back home and noticed that the generation of RMC appears to be lacking from the list. Just an oversight?

Planning on adding a dummy test generation using some J1939 emulator (somehow).

Will give it a try on the boat system once I upgrade that to 5.2 (Remember: Never touch a running system).
/Lennart

[stevead]

Hi Lennart,

You've had me running around like a chook (aka höna) with its head cut off! I thought I had inadvertently introduced a regression, but I'm pretty sure I've never generated RMC sentences. I'll have a look through older versions but the plugin has always accumulated new PGN's and I don't recall having dropped any existing conversions.

FYI, Easy way to generate loads is to use any of your existing candump logs and then use the canplayer tool to replay them. You can even get fancy and define a virtual can interface (eg. vcan0), configure Twocan to use vcan0, and use canplayer to replay a log previously captured on can0. Eg.

canplayer -I logfile vcan0=can0

Feel free to email.

Kind regards.

[LennartG]

Steven,
sorry if I caused confusion, it was not my intention!

This is the first time I've looked for the RMC conversion but I'm planning on eventually getting a Garmin 19x GPS receiver (replacing the NMEA0183 GPS puck) and OpenCPN is using RMC for time, location and speed.
I know that there are other sentences that contain the same info but RMC seems to be some kind of reference. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Sorry for the 'hen accident' (tranlation was correct)
/Lennart

[eemahoney]

Steve, is there a compiled installable version of your Actisense work? I would love to see how well it works. It has been about 20 years since I coded, but it would be fun to play with it after I see what it does. I have an active NMEA2000 installation with an NGT-1 that is basically sitting doing nothing since I quit using FUGAWI

[gedass2000]

Hi,
I fixed twocan plugin Rusoku Toucan Marine driver for Windows 10 64bit and it seems to be working correctly now ;-)

https://www.rusoku.com/downloads/Ope...CAN_driver.zip


copy toucan.dll to c:\Users\_user_\AppData\Local\opencpn\plugins\twocan_plugin_pi\da ta\drivers\
and canal32.dll to C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenCPN




Gediminas

Originally Posted by Ben S

I also have aa Actisense NGT to test
The Rusoku Toucan does not work for me, O chrashes when i enable the plugin on my boat setup.
Win10 64bit is not the same as Win7 32 bit i guess

[stevead]

Announcing TwoCan v1.91.

This is a minor/maintenance release:
1. Add support for PGN 129549, GNSS Satellites in View.
2. Fix random erroneous GPS positions.
3. Fix for cleaner shutdown on idle NMEA 2000 networks for Mac & Linux versions,

Thanks to Michael & Richard for their assistance in identifying and testing these features & fixes.

Finally, just a mention that the Rusoku Toucan CAN adapters are fully supported on all versions (including 32 & 64 bit versions of Windows). For Windows 10 64 bit users, please use the toucan.dll & canal32.dll that were posted by Gediminas from Rosoku in the previous post.

[rgleason]

I thought this might be of interest
Boat IO Catamaran Electronics

[rgleason]

Has anyone used this? https://copperhilltech.com/pican-2-c...-raspberry-pi/


I saw Al Tomason mentioned it in the Smart-alt google group, used with VSR Regulator.
https://groups.google.com/g/smart-alt/c/PB70Rkl2Kuw


He also mentions a socketCAN driver.


Soggy Paws has two of these VSR Regulators and is using OpenPlotter RPI and implementing CAnbus.

[duichan]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Has anyone used this? https://copperhilltech.com/pican-2-c...-raspberry-pi/

Works fine. I have been using one for 2 years. Available in the UK at http://skpang.co.uk/catalog/pican2-c...ps-p-1476.html



Andrew

[rgleason]

Good video on troubleshooting

CAN Bus Properties and Troubleshooting

[bcn]

Originally Posted by stevead

Announcing TwoCan v1.91.

This is a minor/maintenance release:
1. Add support for PGN 129549, GNSS Satellites in View.
2. Fix random erroneous GPS positions.
3. Fix for cleaner shutdown on idle NMEA 2000 networks for Mac & Linux versions,

Thanks to Michael & Richard for their assistance in identifying and testing these features & fixes.

Finally, just a mention that the Rusoku Toucan CAN adapters are fully supported on all versions (including 32 & 64 bit versions of Windows). For Windows 10 64 bit users, please use the toucan.dll & canal32.dll that were posted by Gediminas from Rosoku in the previous post.

Steve..


can report that the Rusoku adapter works fine here under W8.1 with the dll provided by Gediminas. Can you perhaps add the link to your Github documentation? Took me some searching to understand why the Rusoku did not appear in the device selection while it was present as Win USB device in the Windows device manager.


Regarding the 129540 GNSS sats in view a question: In the NMEA0183 log there is the $GPGSV sentence but I did not notice any ..GSV for the GLONASS sats that were present at this moment.

In case you don't want to distinguish between the different constellations, why not using the generic $GNGSV for mixed constellations?


Thanks


Hubert