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My engineering sense says RPi isn’t a good choice here, there’s a lot of potential failures that could happen, from a corrupted sd card, to overheating, harsh environment, among others, an industrial mini PC with proper protection and resources as well would be far better.
My engineering sense says RPi isn’t a good choice here, there’s a lot of potential failures that could happen, from a corrupted sd card, to overheating, harsh environment, among others, an industrial mini PC with proper protection and resources as well would be far better.
HN crowd maybe doesn't appreciate it, but the marine sensor networking world, route plotting, and related tasks are an atrocious cesspool of overpriced, weirdly incompatible proprietary solutions. Regular people save literally tens of thousands of dollars per install by going open source in this space, and end up with superior toolkits.
And for anyone wondering about an opportunity to shake up the market just estimate TAM and you'll see quickly why boat stuff is priced at such a premium. The number of people using things like Open plotter is even smaller, but still greatly appreciated by all!
I have always wondered why, in the world of millionaires and billionaires and yachts, why plotters like these have such ancient ugly 80s graphics. There are literally decades of UI enhancements, both functional and cosmetic, that could modernize these things. Im talking about the elite of the elite who will spare no expense at bespoke designed watches, monogram clothes, cars, etc. So it always just boggles my mind wh…
First because on a billionaire's yacht, there is a crew of 20 doing various jobs, 3 of whom do shifts on the bridge. So if you want to know where you are, you just pick up the phone to the bridge and bark at whatever poor sucker is on duty (or you bark at the person serving you drinks who then relays it up the ranks).
Second, on a billionaires yacht they already have large fancy displays with less ugly graphics.
Finally I would hazard a guess that (at least some of) the software "languishes in mediocrity" due to the safety certifications.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that class of boat, the owner is not the one operating it. Many times they literally wouldn’t even know how to start the engines much less interact with the ships systems.
Still, think 1M+ speed and luxury boats, etc.
Even in that class of boat the owner will typically have a coxswain on his beck and call whenever he fancies going on a jolly.
Some people have chauffeurs, others have a boat and coxswain ... sometimes the coxswain doubles up as chauffeur if the owner isn't quite rich enough to employ more than one person.
My engineering sense says RPi isn’t a good choice here, there’s a lot of potential failures that could happen, from a corrupted sd card, to overheating, harsh environment, among others, an industrial mini PC with proper protection and resources as well would be far better.
They are heavily invested into using GPIO: https://openplotter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started... I wonder if industrial-strength RPi clones / variants exist. The demand is certainly there.
If you are buying loads of them they will also customise the pi for you (although I think that's contracted out)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are heavily invested into using GPIO: https://openplotter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started... I wonder if industrial-strength RPi clones / variants exist. The demand is certainly there.
As I said in the other comment, there are already industrial PCs equipped with GPIO, and some models even include an integrated screen SBCs are good in conditions where reliability is not the primary concern - scenarios where frequent restarts are needed, change sd card, room temperature etc.), but in a boat? I don’t know anything about marine conditions but having a malfunctioning in SD cards and overheating is not…
https://github.com/metisvela/sailtrack
It’s a similar project, but specifically designed for racing dinghies. It focuses on modularity and performance analysis.
HN crowd maybe doesn't appreciate it, but the marine sensor networking world, route plotting, and related tasks are an atrocious cesspool of overpriced, weirdly incompatible proprietary solutions. Regular people save literally tens of thousands of dollars per install by going open source in this space, and end up with superior toolkits.
In recreational vessels, our needs are more basic, but even us geeks may be more prone to shell out $500 - $2000 to Garmin or Raymarine for a hardened chart plotter MFD that "just works", is waterproof, and robust at least in the nav function. I got a "deal" on a Raymarine Axiom Pro which has both touchscreen and a keypad mode for when the rain interferes with the display, has nav, ais, radar, sonar display, engine gauges, and tons of other features, it is running some version of Android. It's really good honestly. When the wind is howling and the waves are high, it's not necessarily a good time to do some hacking and bug hunting on the nav platform. I do plenty hacking on my boat in the sensor integration world, but that's another story...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that class of boat, the owner is not the one operating it. Many times they literally wouldn’t even know how to start the engines much less interact with the ships systems.
Still, think 1M+ speed and luxury boats, etc.