OpenCPN V5 beta

[abarrow]

Same here - that's strange. What does OpenCPN have to do with the access point?

I guess I'll have to have a look at the logs when I get a chance.

[verkerkbr]

Re. My remarks about the latest kernelversion 4.19.XX.

Works great, except that the wifi acces point is no longer working. Reason, not find one.

Regards,

Bram

The problem with the wireless Access Point (AP) has been solved:

Update to the latest 4.19 kernel. Now version 4.19.27 (sudo rpi-update)

Sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade. Normal upgrading procedure.

then

sudo systemctl enable hostapd.service

sudo shutdown -r now

restart and then it is working here.

Bram

[abarrow]

Okay, now that I've updated RPI firmware and I have wireless working, I've been trying OpenCPN 4.99 on my PI. One thing I've been trying is mbtiles support.

It does work, and surprisingly, the mbtiles files that I created with SASPlanet are considerably smaller than KAP files of the same areas. That's the good news. The not-as-good news is that OpenCPN is slower, and when using mbtiles seems to take the processor to 100% while scaling or moving the map.

I need to go back to the KAP files and see what sort of difference it makes in terms of speed and CPU load.

One extra bonus on all this: after getting everything upgraded on an SD card, I used dd to copy the entire card to a USB-attached SSD. For the first time I'm now able to boot OpenPlotter directly from the SSD without the use of an SD card. Previously I wasn't able to get it to work, and resorted to using an SD card with only a /boot partition, pointed to the SSD. Using the SSD has improved speed of loading and of the boot process, even with the built-in delay.

[verkerkbr]

Did you switch on the VC4 driver for OpenGL ? Full driver to be found in sudo raspi-config advanced.

Works fast with OpenGL and a low processor load.

Bram

[abarrow]

I just tried to report the high CPU usage on Cruisers Forum, but if you can get that forum to work, you are a better man than I! MBTiles with OpenCPN 4.99 really spikes all four CPUs on the PI. CPU usage sits around 360% continuously. This is with GPS and an AIS receiver using a UART, not with RTLSDR.

[PaddyB]

I just tried to report the high CPU usage on Cruisers Forum, but if you can get that forum to work, you are a better man than I! MBTiles with OpenCPN 4.99 really spikes all four CPUs on the PI. CPU usage sits around 360% continuously. This is with GPS and an AIS receiver using a UART, not with RTLSDR.

Sounds very different then my machine. Pi3 , changed the sources.list entry to bdbcat/opencpn as per above & added the key. Sudo apt-get  update and upgrade installed V5 & it's great! Using the full KMS  dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d driver and opengl turned on in Opencpn. With split screen, cm93 one side, satellite images the other tickover about 15/20% on one core, maybe max out a core with extreme fast zooming on cm93.  But very impressed, didn't think the Pi could do as good a job as that & run all the sigK etc as well. The logbook seems to work fine as well, so 2 worries about V5 on the Pi dealt with - MBtiles & the logbook work! 

I'll leave it running for a few days, see how it does.

[Sailoog]

We are already working on openplotter v2.x.x which will include opencpn 5 and exciting improvements. after opencpn release we will let the dust settle some time before Openplotter v2.x.x release because some plugins will need work and we will work on docs this time seriously.

[abarrow]

I'll leave it running for a few days, see how it does.

I did a purge/reinstall of OpenCPN. What I'm finding is that CPU usage is pretty good when there is no NMEA going in. In my case, if I turn off AIS and GPS inputs, the CPU usage drops down to a pretty reasonable level, even when I'm using MBTiles charts. 

OTOH, if I start feeding AIS and/or GPS nmea strings into it, the total CPU usage for just OpenCPN goes to around 360% and stays there. In the case of AIS, even after I stop the incoming NMEA coming in, the CPU usage stays the same, presumably until the AIS times out (I'm not patient enough to wait...).

You can open a terminal window and use the "top" command to get a good idea of what processes are using CPU and memory in real time.

[PaddyB]

I'll leave it running for a few days, see how it does.

I did a purge/reinstall of OpenCPN. What I'm finding is that CPU usage is pretty good when there is no NMEA going in. In my case, if I turn off AIS and GPS inputs, the CPU usage drops down to a pretty reasonable level, even when I'm using MBTiles charts. 

OTOH, if I start feeding AIS and/or GPS nmea strings into it, the total CPU usage for just OpenCPN goes to around 360% and stays there. In the case of AIS, even after I stop the incoming NMEA coming in, the CPU usage stays the same, presumably until the AIS times out (I'm not patient enough to wait...).

You can open a terminal window and use the "top" command to get a good idea of what processes are using CPU and memory in real time.

No probs here with data going in, I'v a USB gps dongle, AIS & signalk creating dummy apparent wind data plus signalk pressure from an ESP8266 getting converted into nmea. This from htop (prfer it to top). Pi has opncpn running as the active window writing to the konni logbook. Plus signalk is writing all the data to an influxdb database, sharing wifi from an access point and running clementine music played which is streaming a web radio station through a hifiberry hifi piggy backed amp. 
All at the same time, something must be different....




Same data on a win laptop receiving from openplotter access point. 

[seandepagnier]

Okay, now that I've updated RPI firmware and I have wireless working, I've been trying OpenCPN 4.99 on my PI. One thing I've been trying is mbtiles support.

It does work, and surprisingly, the mbtiles files that I created with SASPlanet are considerably smaller than KAP files of the same areas. That's the good news. The not-as-good news is that OpenCPN is slower, and when using mbtiles seems to take the processor to 100% while scaling or moving the map.

Did you try compressing kap files with xz? OpenCPN has the option to compress charts, and the size difference shouldn't be much between these two once compressed if they are the same chart.

mbtiles uses png compression which is better than tif used by kap, however mbtiles only come at fixed zoom levels, so an arbitrary scale size kap converted to mbtiles will lose data or increase file size.

The mbtiles support in opencpn is not optimized, so it is not a surprise it is slow.

I need to go back to the KAP files and see what sort of difference it makes in terms of speed and CPU load.

One extra bonus on all this: after getting everything upgraded on an SD card, I used dd to copy the entire card to a USB-attached SSD. For the first time I'm now able to boot OpenPlotter directly from the SSD without the use of an SD card. Previously I wasn't able to get it to work, and resorted to using an SD card with only a /boot partition, pointed to the SSD. Using the SSD has improved speed of loading and of the boot process, even with the built-in delay.

Nice!