2018-04-25, 11:17 AM
(This post was last modified: 2018-04-25, 12:27 PM by JeroenAdam.)
I was thinking about a LED matrix (+Raspberry Zero W) completely sealed against water + blocking incoming sunlight (from above) with a black hood as done with LED traffic lights, eg. https://www.signal-tech.com/product/file/7383.png. More importantly, this repeater would be more then perfect during night sails. With a battery pack (standard smartphone accessory), this would be a portable repeater which can move below/above deck.
My first experiments with OpenPlotter/Node-red/MQTT and a wifi switch were positive, I have a remote wifi switch (needs +5V only, connects to OpenPlotter AP) which cycles through 4 views (engine temp/mag. course/COG/SOG) on each remote button push. The display quickly scrolls the data repeatedly, I assigned a dedicated color to each value so I only need to scroll a digit, no label since I recognize the data by color. It works more then fine below deck and is readable from several meters away providing the bright LED (+ Raspberry Zero W) is not mounted in direct sunlight. Not tested yet in the cockpit but should be OK under the sprayhood (+ black hood blocking more sunlight).
I have a video showing only temperature with the LED display still mounted on my OpenPlotter Raspberry, that is my old setup, just to give you an idea: see video on this link http://www.adambahri.com/images/iot-aboard.mp4
With my new setup, Raspberry Zero W + Sense Hat (LED matrix), I've seen that there are more bright colors (white/aquamarine/magenta/blue) to play with compared to the red color used in the video.
The remote wifi switch (not seen in the video) actually is a low power TP-link MR-3020 portable router which sends MQTT message '1' to Node Red for each button push, there is also a separate slider on this device. For now I use the slider to select a dataset (out of 3), and the push button to cycle through the data stream per dataset. Configuration was quite difficult, I had to replace the firmware with OpenWRT and install mosquitto on the device, it still can function its original purpose as a 3G-to-wifi router when docked in the marina (getting this last one working was the greatest challenge for me).
My first experiments with OpenPlotter/Node-red/MQTT and a wifi switch were positive, I have a remote wifi switch (needs +5V only, connects to OpenPlotter AP) which cycles through 4 views (engine temp/mag. course/COG/SOG) on each remote button push. The display quickly scrolls the data repeatedly, I assigned a dedicated color to each value so I only need to scroll a digit, no label since I recognize the data by color. It works more then fine below deck and is readable from several meters away providing the bright LED (+ Raspberry Zero W) is not mounted in direct sunlight. Not tested yet in the cockpit but should be OK under the sprayhood (+ black hood blocking more sunlight).
I have a video showing only temperature with the LED display still mounted on my OpenPlotter Raspberry, that is my old setup, just to give you an idea: see video on this link http://www.adambahri.com/images/iot-aboard.mp4
With my new setup, Raspberry Zero W + Sense Hat (LED matrix), I've seen that there are more bright colors (white/aquamarine/magenta/blue) to play with compared to the red color used in the video.
The remote wifi switch (not seen in the video) actually is a low power TP-link MR-3020 portable router which sends MQTT message '1' to Node Red for each button push, there is also a separate slider on this device. For now I use the slider to select a dataset (out of 3), and the push button to cycle through the data stream per dataset. Configuration was quite difficult, I had to replace the firmware with OpenWRT and install mosquitto on the device, it still can function its original purpose as a 3G-to-wifi router when docked in the marina (getting this last one working was the greatest challenge for me).