Onboard Computers

[Tim B]

An interesting article is this one:
http://www.expresscomputeronline.com...nology01.shtml

The following is amusing for the comments the reactions get:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...government.htm

GPS Drive is the closest thing to a Linux Chart plotter at present:
http://www.gpsdrive.cc/

Not exactly weather - routing, but quite impressive...
http://www.wviewweather.com/

And this is undeniably weather plotting for linux (and it looks VERY impressive)
http://www.xaxero.com/gribplot.htm


I often find that Chart plotters don't ever quite do what I want them to. It is quite probable that I will end up writing my own chart-plotter software.

Sat com and Web connection can be handled in the Linux Network setup, Either on Serial as a modem, or ethernet. GPRS is also supported as are various other protocols.

So, It's around. And the more people who want it, the more likely it is that someone will write something.

Tim B.

[marshmat]

So it seems like there is a fair bit of interest in Linux-based ship software, even if the developers haven't caught on yet.
Xaxaero's weather software does look impressive indeed. Worth looking into.

It is quite probable that I will end up writing my own chart-plotter software.

Just to put the question out there... is there much interest here in the development of an open-source (GNU GPL or LGPL) software package for GPS/chartplotting on Linux (or, better yet, that compiles on any OS)? Maybe something that could later expand to interface with sonar, radar, etc?
I don't have the programming skills to pull something like this off, but if enough people who do are interested, it might be an interesting project.

[Portager]

TerryKing;

I agree with your view of applications and I would concentrate on the "High Reliability and Availability" applications with the on-board computer.

In addition I would add interfaces to:
Autopilot,
Anemometers (wind speed & direction, air temperature and barometric pressure),
Water velocity and temperature
Automated Identification System (AIS) transponder
GPS / satellite compass
Network connectivity to download map updated and notice to mariners
Engine monitoring and data logging
With the exception of engine monitoring and data logging, Rose Point Coastal Explorer provides all these features with the easiest user interface and a reasonable cost. It has also proven to be very stable over many hours of operation.

Tim B and marshmat;

Since the ECDIS application is required to be a high reliability and availability, I won't live long enough to develop my own and I'm not interested in using a home grown ECDIS until it is proven reliable.

For my money, I'll be running Windows XPe until I'm convinced Vista is better. Linux isn't even on the list of candidates..

[Portager]

I have generated some tables in Excel that I would like to add to the Wiki, but I can't figure out how to do tables.

anybody know how to do that?

[Jeff]

Honestly, I find the wiki table syntax ok for creating simple tables from scratch, but not very workable for converting existing data from an existing table.

One route is to export the excel table as html -- the wiki will accept basic table, tr, and td tags. This is pretty easy if you can export a clean html version... the look is fairly basic though.

For the time being, the easiest might be to simply upload the xls file and then link it from the wiki article. With the xls viewer free, this is pretty universal.

(in theory it should be possible to embed a sortable table in mediawiki, but this gets complicated and seems to require quite a bit of work to make work.)

[Tim B]

Just for fun, here are some fairly preliminary screen-shots of a GPS track analysis tool I've been working on for some time (on and off). I'm not sure what the future of this software will be, but I will (eventually) write something similar that will do real-time GPS navitagion.

The area shown is the Solent with summertime racing marks. The track shown was collected in Cowes Week 2006.

Tim B.

[Tim B]

If anyone has any data on any of the electronic chart formats, it would be helpful to put add a chart to the above software.

Cheers,

Tim B.

[TerryKing]

Tim, your software looks interesting. Kind of a from-the-side view, not top-down, is that right??

I don't know much, but Oziexplorer seems to be pretty open info and lots of people have written add-ons. I've used it a lot on land and sea and it's been great.. And low-cost, use your own charts...

[Tim B]

No, it displays a standard map-type view with North upwards. The options at the side were just a convenient place to put them.

Tim B.