Plug ins ?

[PaddyB]

Hi sailoog, this isn't so much a request as curiosity I just came across Biscay, now in Spain again! Solo trip so lots of time to think about things, OP and the Pi 3 were very well behaved, the vnc server crashed a couple of times but I don't think the system as a whole needed a reboot once.
So I was wondering what you have in mind for the future, if you've even given it much thought, the progress has been incredible in such a short time! With Opencpn a major plus is the large selection of 3rd party plugins, many really useful and possibly not something a single piece of bought software could hope to offer. OP is obviously a different beast to opencpn but is that an option you've considered? Make it easier for users to integrate bash scripts, python progs etc in actions or deeper down?
Also, I now have a Sony Xperia tablet in the cockpit, a Raspberry pi 3 down below and a few cheap sensors off eBay. Which results in a system which would have cost thousands if even possible just a few years ago. I can see the temperature of the exhaust, alternator, with so much more to come. I really think OP and android made for each other what would be great would be to get the tablet to show an alarm if the battery voltage got below 12.2, or the engine temp got too high or whatever. I think the OP / tablet will be a big hit once this really gets going and very much admire your cautious approach to making sure things are stable.
So that's it, but finally, as a sailor in the middle of a black stormy night I want a system with a tablet in the cockpit which is reliable and won't have me worrying that it might crash, I want an on screen chartplotter with ais and I want early warning when things start to change, like the engine getting too hot. And I want it to cost next to nothing and draw hardly any power!
Nearly there then! well done!

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[tkoning]

Hi sailoog,  this isn't so much a request as curiosity  I just came across Biscay,  now in Spain again! Solo trip so lots of time to think about things,  OP and the Pi 3 were very well behaved,  the vnc server crashed a couple of times but I don't think the system as a whole needed  a reboot once.
So I was wondering what you have in mind for the future,  if you've even given it much thought, the progress has been incredible in such a short time! With Opencpn a major plus is the large selection of 3rd party plugins,  many really useful and possibly not something a single piece of bought  software could hope to offer.  OP is obviously a different beast to opencpn but is that an option you've considered? Make it easier for users to integrate bash  scripts,  python progs etc in actions or deeper down?
Also,  I now have a Sony Xperia tablet in the cockpit, a Raspberry pi 3 down below and a few cheap sensors off eBay.  Which results in a system which would have cost thousands if even possible just a few years ago.  I can see the temperature of the exhaust,  alternator,  with so much more to come.  I really think OP and android made for each  other  what would be great would be to get the tablet to show an alarm if the battery voltage got  below 12.2, or the engine temp got too high or whatever. I think the OP / tablet will be a big hit once this really gets going and very much admire your cautious approach to making sure things are stable.  
So that's it, but finally,  as a sailor in the middle of a black stormy night I want a system with a tablet in the cockpit which is reliable and won't have me worrying that it might crash, I want an on screen  chartplotter with ais and I want early warning when things start to change,  like the engine getting too hot.  And I want it to cost next to nothing and draw hardly  any power!  
Nearly there then!    well done!

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Hi
how is the experia table behaving in bright sunlight ? can you still read the display ?
If you want an alarm for low battery try a resitor bridge and an AD converter. I would not risk a direct coupling of the pi (and using the built in AD converter) to this bridge, but you should be able to use an arduino nano and an optocoupler connection to the raspberry Pi

[PaddyB]

Hi
how is the experia table behaving in bright sunlight ? can you still read the display ?
If you want an alarm for low battery try a resitor bridge and an AD converter. I would not risk a direct coupling of the pi (and using the built in AD converter) to this bridge, but you should be able to use an arduino nano and an optocoupler connection to the raspberry Pi

Hi, the Xperia isn't great in direct sunlight but under the sprayhood it's fine, or even stand between it and the sun. Cleaning the fingerprints helps
Getting voltage into the Pi is no problem, already there's an arduino mega doing various other duties with a 16bit a/d connected waiting for something to do. I'm not sure of a way to get a tablet to sound an alarm though, been playing with a macro app on the tablet which seems powerful, but no way for it to take data from an mqtt feed.


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[Sailoog]

Solo trip to Biscay bay and a lot of time to think about things? That's impossible
I learned to sail on that sea and I love it, but sometimes it can be really hard...

Yes, sometimes I think of a plugin system. But I think is too early to talk about an API or a plugin system because OP is not a finished product yet.

Actually OP is already working as a kind of plugin system. There is a main flow of data (sensors/devices => NMEA => Signal K) and different tabs and features which take or send data to this flow. Many of these features are autonomous and get the info they need from the openplotter.conf and the data flowing through the system. Nowadays it would be enough with some directives to create an autonomous feature, app or plugin.

Conceptually, OpenCPN is a piece of software with a clear objective, show things over a chart and there are a lot of things to be showed on a chart. But OP doesn't have a main functionality or feature, it is intended to complement OpenCPN with features out of the concept "showed on a chart", interact with the host system and interact with the world. Basically OP is a set of pieces sewn together with a certain grace, so conceptually it is already a plugin system.

But you are right, when OP has its final shape we could realize that it needs keep growing defining core features and plugins. The million dolars question is: there will be a development end? I hope yes and we are close to it. We have to make a fully signal k implementation, add analog sensor, improve gauges and external apps and we will be done and ready to start improving hardware.

Having access point/internet and NMEA/Signal k/MQTT outputs, the possibility of designing android and web apps are infinite.


Have a good time in Cantabric sea!

[PaddyB]

Thanks for the reply, I think you're right, it's easy already to run a command from an action, there's an open door for anyone to get in straight away and tweak.
I suspect a lot of people will end using OP with an android tablet, already the integration seems easy and solid. (though I've had problems with the vnc server, is there the way to keep an eye on that and restart if necessary? )
This morning I started with the Tasker android app, which seems very powerful but certainly isn't intuitive to start with. But despite that, already all I need to do is tap a button on the tablet screen and it will back up the tablet Opencpn navobject.xml file with routes, tracks etc into a seperate directory with a date stamp, the ssh into the Pi and copy the openplotter navobject.xml file to the tablet, so any routes created on the Pi are instantly synced onto the tablet. Plus it should be possible for tasker to look at both files and sync if there are changes.

There are so many powerful tools out there and some very clever people around. The future is bright

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[PaddyB]

Here's an example which might show the versatility of OP/android, a long winded way of having an alert sound on an android tablet triggered from 1wire sensors :
So when a sensor gets above a set value OP triggers an action which runs a bash script (the echo > file command didn't seem to work direct from the action for some reason) this script writes "1" to a file. Tasker then copies that file from the Pi to the tablet, opens the file and looks at line 1, if it =1 then it triggers an alert. There must be easier ways but it shows the connectivity and interaction possible between android & openplotter.


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