Weather Routing

[SoggyPaws]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Sherry did you use the Alpha Channel, by adding to opencpn.ini after [plugins]

catalogexpert=1

or did you use Opencpn Plugin cloudsmith repository and download the tarball?

https://cloudsmith.io/~opencpn/repos/

Yesterday, I poked around until I found a link to the cloudsmith location, and downloaded the new WR version from there, to the plugins cache folder, and then manually installed it from the Plugins window.

This morning, I tried your Alpha Channel method on my other computer, and doing that totally hung my OpenCPN when I opened the Plugins window, after downloading the Alpha catalog. It apparently downloaded the catalog fine (the xml file), but hung trying to do whatever it does with the catalog.

It's possible that, because I am accessing from the Philippines, my access is blocked (by IP address I would presume), and therefore whatever it is trying to do can't complete so it just hangs. I let it sit for 10 minutes with no sign of completing (just the spinning thing and Windows shows Not Responding). I had to kill OpenCPN to get out of that situation. I tried several times and it hung as soon as I clicked on the Plugins part of the settings window.

I had to copy a "Master" plugins xml file from my other computer before I could get out of this situation.

[SoggyPaws]

Originally Posted by rgleason

WR v1.13.30.2 still has some bugs see these Issues in particular, this one
Looking for a PR from a programmer, that will fix this.

The workaround is to locate the folder where the plugin manager downloads the plug in, and manually copy the files from there into your ProgramData folder:

Normally, on Windows, the folder to locate is this:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\opencpn\plugins\ weather_routing_pi\data

The AppData folder may be hidden, unless you turn on "show hidden files and folders"

Copy everything from that folder into this folder:
C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\weather_routing

Note that WeatherRoutingConfiguration.xml is where YOUR weather routing waypoints and routes are, so copying over that will remove all your own data and replace it with sample routes.

[rgleason]

Thanks Sherry, Good guidance.
In windows I use %localappdata% to get to the app data.

Yes, earlier I had the same O hangups.
Lately upon install of WR O crashes after hanging up on copying files, and then restart and O works. We do need to get this repaired.

Traveling right now. Will remove PI from master later tonight.

[rgleason]

@SoggyPaw
Sherry would you mind testing the the next version v1.13.30.4 in the Alpha catalog?
I have changed all the polar names that have "%" or "(" or ")" and it now completes properly without crashing Opencpn.

In opencpn.ini find the [plugins] section and add just below that the line
"catalogexpert=1"

Then when you are in Opencpn Options > Plugins change the catalog to "Alpha" and update it. You will then be able to download and install weather_routing 1.13.30.4

You may want to rename your programdata/opencpn/plugins/weather_routing file to weather_routing.old and possibly to copy your weatherroutingconfiguration.xml file before installing.


Let me know if it works as expected. Thanks. It seems to be working much better for me.

[rgleason]

@SoggyPaws


What happens when no charts or mbtiles are displayed?
Have you been creating chart groups to limit the amount of display work required by your graphics card?



I have found that saving US Noaa charts by Coast Guard Sector, then adding the path to that sector in the paths section, and then adding a new group, say USG07 with the path to just those charts, helps redraw speed and performance overall. Displaying all charts in the world at once is wasteful and causes OpenCPN to hang up as you have found.

Originally Posted by SoggyPaws

Re: Can't move the chart in the chart window if WR window offscreen to the right.

I have a CM93 chart set loaded, and a set of mixed KAP and mbtiles also loaded. I have tried this on 2 different computers and it behaves the same way, though not always. I reduced the number of columns down to 5-6 and maybe it happens less frequently, but it still happens frequently.

I do have a GitHub account and I will add an issue on your Issues page.

[rgleason]

bdb has merged into the Beta catalog WR v1.13.20.0

please test on different OS and advise here. Successful or not! Thanks very much..

[rgleason]

Route bug report
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...d.php?t=255627

[tintifugs]

Hi experts,


I am going on a sail on an Elan Impression 45.1 and I tried to find polar data for this vessel to plan our legs with Wheather Routing. Unfortunately I didn't find any data in the internet – also not from its predecessor models.



Do you think I can refer to another ship's polar diagram and get a good result with Weahter Routing as well? Which one would you suggest?


Here's the basic data of the Impression 45.1


Length 13,85 m
Width 4,18 m
Draft 1,90 m
Sail (main and genoa) 92,00 sqm
Displacement 10,40 t
Fuel capacity 215 l
Water capacity 300 l



Thanks :-)

[rgleason]

Sorry but the answer is no.
The best polars are the ones you record with VDR_pi and make with Polar_pi of your own boat with a particular set of sails, a clean bottom, in typical sailing condition, with no current, in established wave conditions. Make multiple polars in different sea conditions with different sail sets for various winds. Those will be the best for you to use.

It takes time, but VPP generated polars are all too optimistic with everything "perfect" and many of the 700 polars we have are direct from the manuf marine architect's VPP programs and overly optimistic.


You could find a boat model with similar displacement weight, sail area, water line, keel, rudder, etc. and use that polar as a start. Then modify it using Polar_pi after you have some data from recording via VDR_pi


I don't have time for this. Sorry.

[SoggyPaws]

Originally Posted by rgleason

bdb has merged into the Beta catalog WR v1.13.20.0

please test on different OS and advise here. Successful or not! Thanks very much..

Sorry I didn't see this post last month. I did a "clean install" of the WR plugin version 1.13.20.4 from the Beta catalog, and the installation all worked well. (Windows 10 x64)

But while testing I did find a new issue that seems to only happen with the motoring polars, and I think specifically when the wind is very light. I am not quite sure what is going on, and it's not an urgent issue, but I did want to document it.

This is on a ~35 mile trip from point A to point B in the Philippines, with light following wind from a GRIB file. I did not change anything from the example profile except to specify 6 hrs vs 12, and to specify GRIB vs Climatology (and of course my own waypoints).

See screen shots of what happens. Instead of just motoring on in, it just stops with "land failed", and a green line that goes out to the side. It also reports Polar fail, but when I run the same test using my own motoring polar, I just get Land Failed.

Sherry

[seandepagnier]

the "land failed" message means generally landfall detection.

Can you turn off landfall detection and compare?


Also, use a much smaller timestep, and ensure you have the highest resolution charts.

If you make a chartgroup (without any charts) it is easy to switch to this and see the background map and this is what is used for landfall detection. You may find the resolution is not very good.

[rgleason]

Sherry, I think you are getting "land fail" exactly because you have such large 6 - 12 hr intervals so that the next step hits land. You'd be better of to have a shorter step of say 30 minutes. Which is what Sean has said below.


If you could use Chart Downloader to download the high res gribs and make a chart path to those and a new chart group for HiRes with the path in it, so that there are no charts, might help see where it hits land.


Maybe you are doing this already.

[masterov]

Esteemed Cruisers, testers and developers!

I have spent over a week trying to configure the weather routing and I have failed miserably. All my efforts end in "Segmentation Fault" error on both Linux and MacOS

uname -a
Linux eXpeditious 5.10.60-v7l+ #1449 SMP Wed Aug 25 15:00:44 BST 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux

OpenCPN %.2.4 All plugins are up to date.

The repro steps, unfortunately are not very rich. I follow these instructions https://opencpn-manuals.github.io/ma...0.1/index.html up until the point where it is asking me to hit the "Compute" button on one of the existing pre-loaded configurations. Hitting the "Compute" button causes the seg. fault without any additional messages.

Any advice on how to troubleshoot this would be greatly appreciated. I have a difficult upwind passage coming up on Sunday and it would be great to have the optimal route.

Thank you,
Alexei

I have verified that all the dependency plugins are installed and are functioning correctly.

[masterov]

I don't know if this helps, but further debug points at the climatology plugin.

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 libclimatology_pi.dylib 0x000000011d74b50b climatology_pi::CreateOverlayFactory() + 11
1 libclimatology_pi.dylib 0x000000011d74bc30 0x11d724000 + 162864
2 libweather_routing_pi.dylib 0x000000011d7f41ca WeatherRouting::Start(RouteMapOverlay*) + 1610
3 libweather_routing_pi.dylib 0x000000011d7f3b14 WeatherRouting::OnCompute(wxCommandEvent&) + 132

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by masterov

Esteemed Cruisers, testers and developers!

I have spent over a week trying to configure the weather routing and I have failed miserably. All my efforts end in "Segmentation Fault" error on both Linux and MacOS

uname -a
Linux eXpeditious 5.10.60-v7l+ #1449 SMP Wed Aug 25 15:00:44 BST 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux

OpenCPN %.2.4 All plugins are up to date.

The repro steps, unfortunately are not very rich. I follow these instructions https://opencpn-manuals.github.io/ma...0.1/index.html up until the point where it is asking me to hit the "Compute" button on one of the existing pre-loaded configurations. Hitting the "Compute" button causes the seg. fault without any additional messages.

Any advice on how to troubleshoot this would be greatly appreciated. I have a difficult upwind passage coming up on Sunday and it would be great to have the optimal route.

Thank you,
Alexei

I have verified that all the dependency plugins are installed and are functioning correctly.

thanks for trying. I don't know what problem exactly causes this, but likely version differences. What exact version? Did you configure a boat? Did you try on raspberry pi or? Can you get a backtrace?