The target is to have all current & other nice to have boat data available on wifi as data for other applications such as iNavX and a simple (sic) platform to create whatever navigation displays I can think of displayed on browsers connected to the boat's wifi.
Current inventory:
- one 35 ft sailboat
- Raymarine ST60 wind, depth and speed transducers
- Raymarine iTC-5 Instrument Transducer Converter to bring the aforementioned transducers to N2K era
- Raymarine i70 MFD (Multi Function Display) to display the data available on the N2K network
- Seiwa SW701 chartplotter with NMEA 0183 out and in, displaying AIS targets from
- Radio Ocean RO-4800 VHF radio with DSC and built-in AIS
- Raspberry Pi
- No-name USB GPS puck
- USB to NMEA Serial Adaptor Cable by Digital Yacht to get AIS signal from the VHF to the Raspberry
- iPad 3
AIS targets from VHF in iNavX on iPad
For lack of time I decided to postpone Raspberry installation for this season and instead hooked the VHF up with the plotter to get usable AIS display no matter the state of my Raspberry setup.
As to the goal that I'm after: the built in layouts on my i70 are somewhat lacking. You can configure different layouts for a bunch of numbers on a display that is really readable, but the visualizations are pretty lame. Or what do you think of the graphical temperature "gauge" in the picture below? Another good example is history graphs that have no indication of the range of the values.
Since it appears that the manufacturer is not about to give us incrementally better firmware build your own is starting to sound like a viable option.
And btw I have currently no way to upgrade the firmware on my i70 with my minimal N2K setup...
So what I'm after is an easy way to develop new gauges and displays. One example would be a multi-gauge in the likeness of B & G Sailsteer: one gauge to visualize multiple data points in an easy to grasp way. As a starting point I wrote some Javascript based on Steelseries gauges to mimic Sailsteer.
Freeboard is a real life project with somewhat similar goals, but I would rather skip the Arduino and have just the Raspberry directly off the N2K bus with PICAN and Canboat.
As to the goal that I'm after: the built in layouts on my i70 are somewhat lacking. You can configure different layouts for a bunch of numbers on a display that is really readable, but the visualizations are pretty lame. Or what do you think of the graphical temperature "gauge" in the picture below? Another good example is history graphs that have no indication of the range of the values.
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| Dumb sea water gauge |
And btw I have currently no way to upgrade the firmware on my i70 with my minimal N2K setup...
So what I'm after is an easy way to develop new gauges and displays. One example would be a multi-gauge in the likeness of B & G Sailsteer: one gauge to visualize multiple data points in an easy to grasp way. As a starting point I wrote some Javascript based on Steelseries gauges to mimic Sailsteer.
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| Sailsteer-like gauge drawn with custom JS. |
Hello,
VastaaPoistaThanks a lot for your very interesting bolg.
I just bought an old sailing boat equipped with 2 analog sensors ( deep, temperature & speed). I had a quick look on Raymarine solution, and ITC-5 + I70 is fine but expensive, and after reading your post, I would say that I70 is a bit to much expensive . I wonder if we can get rid off the I70, and control the sensors with the Raspberry only. I read that I70 is mandatory to control and calibrate devices, but after all everything is per formed through NMEA2000 messages. Do you think it is doable ?
Thanks a lot
Cedric
My guess is that calibration with ITC-5 + i70 combination actually changes parameters in ITC-5, which affects the output of ITC-5 and all instruments in the network get the calibrated data. Doing this from a Raspberry Pi via NGT-1 is possible in theory, but it would require reverse engineering the N2K messages from the i70.
VastaaPoistaBut if you are going to use the data only via Raspberry Pi there is nothing stopping you from creating your own calibration algorithm and applying that to the data once you have it.
This blog is pretty old, I've since moved on to Signal K activities. I urge you to take a look at https://github.com/SignalK/instrumentpanel and Signal K servers. The place for this kind of logic would be Signal K server, where calibration and enhancement of incoming data stream should take place.
Please join the discussion at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/signalk