Autopilot route plugin

[jamos.tan@gmail.com]

Ok, wow.  There are some bugs it seems,  but the 2/5/10hz thing seems very strange, I will investigate in the next week or so.

It isn't going to work very well on "magnetic" sentences, because it's applying computed declination but this doesn't compensate other small errors some of which vary over time.   So I would first figure out how to get pypilot working in gps mode without routes.. does this work at all?

As for "o, it seems that sometimes the direction of the route is ignored and just sees all waypoints as possible directions"
This is correct.  Normally when you activate a route it is supposed to steer toward it and follow it.   If your route is a complete loop, how is it supposed to know if it should start at the beginning or end?

There are definite improvements that could be made, but your outline a troubling number of bugs that I was unaware of...   Did you also try following routes with the builtin opencpn route following (disable the autopilot route plugin) to compare?

To answer your questions:

- GPS mode does not work, OpenCPN will not crash but will freeze altogether.
- What you say about route direction is true, haven't thought about that. I would say the only way to know is if you take manual control of the helm, steer into the start direction you want.
If the heading then is correct, activate the route and then it will work. Another way maybe for it to work is to calculate the closest waypoint, and if the "id" of that waypoint in relation to your position is "forward" or "reverse" then it would know which waypoint should be chosen first. I think that is how the default opencpn route works, but I'm not sure. For now I have set the "max error angle" in your plugin to less meters, this will follow a closer line and not pick up waypoints in the loop that goes back.
- I have tried following a route with the default opencpn route capabilities, but I am still struggling with gains and some other configuration. I will sail out again today and try some modifications.
I have tested it in the dock with a GPS simulator and then it works fine, however on the water strange things happened. The only difference was that instead of a simulator that had only gps sentences with 10kn of speed, I now had the normal signalk stream that also had magnetic sentences, and maybe some other interfering ones. I am still in the process of what the disturbance was.


I am glad I at least provided some information, because I think this plugin is really great and has even greater potential I think. Maybe even integrate AIS objects into the calculation and provide warnings with course correction suggestions, which you can confirm after seeing it with your own eyes. In this way you don't have to re-draw the route. This was one of the difficulties in my situation, activating a route while dealing with some traffic. But, I am blathering about again, I have lot's of automating ideas I am willing to discuss with you. But I would already be glad if the bugs are fixed and I can use the current features.