First on the water test

[seandepagnier]

Finally did a real test of tinypilot.
Used opencpn 5.0.0 bionic packages on debian buster 64 bit.
pypilot plugin 0.5.0

Set gains to recommended initial settings.
Initially sort of worked, but gains clearly too low as it was OK being as much as 10 degrees off course.

Often mechanical wind vanes steer +- 10 degrees, so this may be considered acceptable if the sails are full and the power consumption minimal.

You can increase the gains to make it work harder to some extent, but eventually you will need a faster motor to get better performance.

Had trouble setting gains in opencpn as gains only came up the first time and after that showed just one control. Have photo if needed.
I raised the P and D on tinypilot using ir remote.
Started to work much better left but it was hard to tell what it was setting it to.
Gains needs more tweaking.
Probably a bit more gain.

You can also change servo.gain which is effectively an overall gain. It defaults to 1, so changing to 2 or 3 will get much more response.

Next problem is in opencpn plugin the 3 port controls all read 429496 and do not work properly. The 3 starboard 1, 10, 110 work properly.

In Standby the buttons turned in the wrong direction.
In AP active mode direction is correct.

probably old version of plugin

Can the web interface only be used on one device at a time?
Had it on notebook and it would not work on phone.
It works on phone now at home.

It should work on many devices at once

After test at home built new opencpn pypilot plugin from the get repository.
By the way the path in git clone git://github.com/seandepagnier/pypilot_pi.git
is wrong.

Where did you get the wrong path?

Now  the gain setting dialog comes up every time :-)
The Port turn buttons are still reading 429496.

It may be from the old version of the plugin? Can you configure the degree angles at all?

Will have to put on boat to see what it does in standby.

In gps mode can the turn buttons be used to change course to dodge something?
If so what so you to to get back on course?

You could turn 10 degrees, then turn 10 degrees back.

If it is a more immediate obstical you should disengage the autopilot and manually steer around it.