Open Source Marine Plotting

I thought I'd spin this discussion off onto another thread.

I think you're doing great work, developing some clear and crisp widgets and essential low-level capabilities. But I have some questions that I didn't see the answers to on your web site. I know this sounds a bit pedantic, but please bear with me.

To use a sailing analogy, I know the mark is up there to windward somewhere, but I don't see quite where we're going. I'm sure you have a basic idea in mind of what the program is all going to be like. Have you written down just what this software is supposed to do?

 

A road-map would be a good idea, I admit. At the moment I'm trying to get the bits to hold together in a vaguely coherent manner. It is a good point, and it is one that I will be addressing.

Of course, if anyone wants to suggest functions that should be in it, then I'll put them in.

Cheers,

Tim B.

 

Well, I thought it was about time I should raise my head above the parapit with some new screenshots from OpenPilot. I have progressed quite a way with it, the primary new features being:

Multiple Web-based AIS servers.
Better configuration (via a simple xml file)
Map now has projection (sinusoidal earth model)
You can pan and zoom on the map
You can set the tail length on individual vessels
You can log your GPS track to a file (and soon will be able to for AIS Data)

Screenshot (showing mapping widget only) is below...

Hopefully I can get an ENC Chart of the English Channel/Solent, then I can start to put the whole mapping system together.

Cheers for now,

Tim B.

 

You're definitely making progress!

Will your software be able to accept a NMEA data stream saved as, say, a .csv file and plot it?

 

Not at present, but that would not be hard to add (about 20 minutes work ) I'll add it this morning. At the moment, the software just takes a string and parses it, thus producing data. All that needs to be done is to grab the string from a file instead of from the serial port. In fact the code will read something like:

int NMEA::loadFromFile(QString filename){
int i;
FILE *input;
char line[1024];
input=fopen(filename.toAscii().data(),"r");
if (input=='\0'){
printf("Cannot Open File - %s\n",filename.toAscii().data());
return 2;
}
for (i=0;feof(input)==0;i++){
fgets(line,1024,input);
parseData(line);
}
fclose(input);
return 0;
}

Oh, hang on, that's an extract from the NMEA class... looks like it can do it now!!!

By the way, Tom, Macs are so close to BSD/Linux that you shouldn't have any trouble compiling and running the code. You may have to define "unix" in the *.pro file, to keep the platform-specific code.

I'm more concerned at present about getting the map widget to compile under windows.

Cheers,

Tim B.

 

I have now got the map widget to compile under Win32!! it's not particularly easy, but I will be preparing instructions soon (hopefully this weekend) for anyone who is brave enough to try it.

Writing the Roadmap and documentation for all the widgets are the next two important jobs.

Requests for features are very welcome!

Cheers,

Tim B.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have been working fairly hard on OpenPilot over the last few months (well, when I haven't been out drinking!).

I have primarily been working on the mapping widget (which is now 2304 lines of code in total). I have added a few options in the xml settings file to control projection and appearance. I have also finished re-writing the projection and plotting routines.

More importantly, we not have the start of grib support. At present there is only support for wind layers, but it's a start. The Grib support relies on the latest snapshots of the GDAL libraries. By chance, this also speeds up loading ENC charts.

The next major job will be documenting everything (and yes, I know I've been saying that for months!!) I seriously hope now that a few people will want to join the project as developers.

Code snapshots will be available tonight.

Feature requests are, as always, very welcome.

Cheers All,

Tim B.