2022-08-19, 01:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 2022-08-19, 01:43 PM by seandepagnier.)
The message about too long to write is not harmful if it occurs during startup or rarely. It does occur normally during startup.
If it constantly occurs all the time, it is an indication that pypilot processes are getting stuck in system calls trying to send data around and this can impact the ability to calculate things and make the autopilot work. So unfortunately its not really a bug in pypilot although perhaps things could be improved to mitigate the issue, but it is a limitation of the platform. If you get this too much and can disconnect things and simplify the setup, please let me know what caused it.
I dont think pypilot connects to your victron. It may list it and probe it (pypilot doesnt know if the victron has a signalk server... if it did have one, it could use it but it shouldnt cause issue)
You are using a setup I dont have a way to test personally which explains why there could be issues. It seems your wind data is n2k, and getting converted to signalk somehow. There is never any nmea0183 for wind. This should be "ok" but obviously it is not working for you. With signalk you cannot use opencpn to forward data, it can only forward nmea0183. So in this case you would have to rely on the direct connection from pypilot to signalk.
If you are not able to get wind data in opencpn from signalk either.. I am speculating that perhaps the bug is in converting n2k to signalk itself? The only code in OpenCPN that processes signalk wind data is the dashboard plugin, so dont expect anything else to work.
It also maybe possible to get the signalk server to output nmea0183. In this case you could feed this into pypilot/opencpn, but it is not the preferred method. I would like to improve pypilot, so it may be something simple and inconsistent.
Wind data updating every 10 seconds is not good enough for autopilot to steer to wind in my opinion, and without improving the output rate, I would not expect good results. pypilot will timeout data sources after 4 seconds.... so that it can switch to compass mode or gps depending on other factors. My wind sensors output 10 or 20 times per second, but generally you need at least 1 output per second for reasonable autopilot use. You could mod pypilot to not timeout after 4 seconds and perhaps get marginal results, but its not a good change for everyone.
If you can modify the signalk.py and uncomment the #print line in the debug definition, it will print much more information regarding signalk. Sometimes the signalk format changes, or it can't parse it somehow, and if its a case I have not produced then its likely to cause a problem. It seems that you are getting gps into pypilot via tcp, so you have nmea0183 for gps, just not wind.
Let me know what you find, and I think we can get this working so I am really interested to know the exact cause of the issue.
If it constantly occurs all the time, it is an indication that pypilot processes are getting stuck in system calls trying to send data around and this can impact the ability to calculate things and make the autopilot work. So unfortunately its not really a bug in pypilot although perhaps things could be improved to mitigate the issue, but it is a limitation of the platform. If you get this too much and can disconnect things and simplify the setup, please let me know what caused it.
I dont think pypilot connects to your victron. It may list it and probe it (pypilot doesnt know if the victron has a signalk server... if it did have one, it could use it but it shouldnt cause issue)
You are using a setup I dont have a way to test personally which explains why there could be issues. It seems your wind data is n2k, and getting converted to signalk somehow. There is never any nmea0183 for wind. This should be "ok" but obviously it is not working for you. With signalk you cannot use opencpn to forward data, it can only forward nmea0183. So in this case you would have to rely on the direct connection from pypilot to signalk.
If you are not able to get wind data in opencpn from signalk either.. I am speculating that perhaps the bug is in converting n2k to signalk itself? The only code in OpenCPN that processes signalk wind data is the dashboard plugin, so dont expect anything else to work.
It also maybe possible to get the signalk server to output nmea0183. In this case you could feed this into pypilot/opencpn, but it is not the preferred method. I would like to improve pypilot, so it may be something simple and inconsistent.
Wind data updating every 10 seconds is not good enough for autopilot to steer to wind in my opinion, and without improving the output rate, I would not expect good results. pypilot will timeout data sources after 4 seconds.... so that it can switch to compass mode or gps depending on other factors. My wind sensors output 10 or 20 times per second, but generally you need at least 1 output per second for reasonable autopilot use. You could mod pypilot to not timeout after 4 seconds and perhaps get marginal results, but its not a good change for everyone.
If you can modify the signalk.py and uncomment the #print line in the debug definition, it will print much more information regarding signalk. Sometimes the signalk format changes, or it can't parse it somehow, and if its a case I have not produced then its likely to cause a problem. It seems that you are getting gps into pypilot via tcp, so you have nmea0183 for gps, just not wind.
Let me know what you find, and I think we can get this working so I am really interested to know the exact cause of the issue.