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OpenPlotter

openmarine.net

51–60 of 72 posts

Re: OpenPlotter

#51
post #41
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a "sailor in tech", "web standards" do not belong anywhere near an ocean going vessel.

I wouldn't use HTTP/json for any path that needs to close a control loop at hundreds of Hz, but to loosely couple a bunch of systems in a plant? No problem. If you have a specific concern, explain it, instead of just exuding judgment.

If anything needs to run a server to communicate with anything else, especially if wireless is involved (which often is the case with more modern forms of radar, gps etc. because of ease of wiring and installation) is a recipe for disaster if you're relying on interfacing with existing instruments for navigation.

Simply firing up cli for troubleshooting and debugging of any kind should not be "expected behavior" at sea.

Re: OpenPlotter

#52
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a "sailor in tech", "web standards" do not belong anywhere near an ocean going vessel.

This kind of attitude is toxic. If you have complaints about specific protocols, formats, etc, please share them.

Your labeling is only a reflection of the shape of the lens you have on the world. I'm not interested in feeding that.

Re: OpenPlotter

#53
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a "sailor in tech", "web standards" do not belong anywhere near an ocean going vessel.

You know... I've been working in an interesting combined AgTech and Aviation (drones, but big ones) for a while now and using JSON over Websockets for IPC is one of the best decisions we've made. We don't use it for everything, mind you, there's lower-level protocols that we use to talk to embedded hardware devices, but when we can we do. And while it's a draft standard, we basically riffed on a variant of this for m…

Thanks for sharing that! Very interesting. There is even less margin for error in air compared to at sea. At least you can still float if the power goes out and at that point a sewing machine is all you need for most critical problems past that point.

Re: OpenPlotter

#54
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a "sailor in tech", "web standards" do not belong anywhere near an ocean going vessel.

"web standards" have extremely optimized ubiquitous implementations with extensive tooling. I strongly disagree with you. CANbus on boats isn't exactly bullet proof, people mess up their N2K networks all the time by just starring at it wrong.

I'm pretty skeptical of propitiatory protocols too. And a lot of pro marine stuff is starting to go wireless which is scary to think about.

Re: OpenPlotter

#55
post #4

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.

Signal K server is platform agnostic and runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows. Also available on Victron’s Venus devices, if you want off the shelf rugged hardware.

https://www.victronenergy.com/live/venus-os:large

Re: OpenPlotter

#56
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"web standards" have extremely optimized ubiquitous implementations with extensive tooling. I strongly disagree with you. CANbus on boats isn't exactly bullet proof, people mess up their N2K networks all the time by just starring at it wrong.

I'm pretty skeptical of propitiatory protocols too. And a lot of pro marine stuff is starting to go wireless which is scary to think about.

It's all Bluetooth low energy afaict, they're not exactly in the field of inventing new RF comms.

Re: OpenPlotter

#57
post #51
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't use HTTP/json for any path that needs to close a control loop at hundreds of Hz, but to loosely couple a bunch of systems in a plant? No problem. If you have a specific concern, explain it, instead of just exuding judgment.

If anything needs to run a server to communicate with anything else, especially if wireless is involved (which often is the case with more modern forms of radar, gps etc. because of ease of wiring and installation) is a recipe for disaster if you're relying on interfacing with existing instruments for navigation. Simply firing up cli for troubleshooting and debugging of any kind should not be "expected behavior" at s…

> If anything needs to run a server to communicate with anything else,

What's a server? Do you have servers in a NMEA2k environment?

> Simply firing up cli for troubleshooting and debugging of any kind should not be "expected behavior" at sea.

No one said that arcane troubleshooting and debugging should be needed after integration of a system. I mean, NMEA2K certainly never makes one fiddle around and play with things aimlessly to make stuff work /s

> especially if wireless is involved

Most common way wireless is involved here is to get the information off-boat or to a tablet for convenient review of trends.

Re: OpenPlotter

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been a yacht captain turned programmer: We would have something purpose made from raymarine/garmin/whoever hard-mounted to the steering station networked into the various sensors onboard. There would be at least one redundant display elsewhere (out of the weather in the case of boats steered from deck). We would never go for something on a raspi. Some boats will have the sensor canbus hooked into a computer to…

1. Never in a million years would I suggest this Raspberry Pi project being the answer to the ugly that is nautical software. 2. Even the big fancy screens in fancy yachts have god awful UI. 3. I am not talking about meaningless fad designs. Google Maps decades ago made road maps intuitive and beautiful at the same time. By comparison, the vast majority of those chart plotters look like ancient Windows95 graphics. It…

Google maps is not a good comparison as it is so empty. A nautical chart is designed to show much more information all at once.

Re: OpenPlotter

#59
post #39

Signal K is an open source server / data format for marine electronics, often paired with OpenPlotter for building custom nav and monitoring systems with web standards (JSON, Websockets and HTTP). http://signalk.org/ Has an excellent community of developers and hardware components.

As a "sailor in tech", "web standards" do not belong anywhere near an ocean going vessel.

Why not, specifically?

Re: OpenPlotter

#60
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of attitude is toxic. If you have complaints about specific protocols, formats, etc, please share them.

Your labeling is only a reflection of the shape of the lens you have on the world. I'm not interested in feeding that.

It’s your labeling that put “web standards” into one bucket. I assure you many of those web standards are far more secure and well tested for not only failure cases but also adversaries than what exists in marine systems.
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