OpenMarine

In a sea trial this weekend I had problems with Pypilot stopping for one reason or another. I'd eventually notice that the wheel drive was too quiet, and that I was headed in the wrong direction. 

I was using the web client on my iPhone. I could see the error on the screen when I looked, but wasn't always looking. It would be good to know when the helmsman has nodded off...

Audible or haptic feedback of receipt of commands might also be helpful. 


I suppose such alerts could be done in any of three places - in the various clients, on Openplotter/computer, or on the controller, or perhaps some combination (if the part with the malfunction is the one responsible for the alert it might not be heard). 



It may be that there is audio I am not hearing, if it is coming from the Pi. If that's it, let me know, and I'll add an external speaker (I use a TV for that now but don't keep it on).

One idea: send Signal K notification deltas, for example as UDP broadcast, for events such as Pypilot stopping.

Then people can build a way to respond to that: attach an audio device to OpenPlotter and write a bit of code to sound it; convert to N2K alarm and see the alarm on your MFD; get notified in WilhelmSK on your pad, phone or watch; write your own smartwatch notifier.

What was the actual error message in your case?

The watchdog plugin for opencpn already supports pypilot alarms so you could try that.

It's a great idea to expand this to other devices interfaces and programs to give more flexibility, but not implemented.

Also, the controller itself coul sound an alarm using the motor as a speaker, but this is not implemented, and depending on where the motor is, it might not be loud enough to hear.

The pi zero generally used does not have a speaker attached.