Maritime navigation with a Rasp Pi and OpenCPN

Conclusion

Once again, as demonstrated in the navigation system described here, the diminutive Raspberry Pi shows that it is well suited for expanding technology systems on a boat. It cost me EUR350 (~$400) to purchase a television, a GPS module, a Raspberry Pi, and a keyboard.

Taking all of these items together and adding some luck, the user can put together a chart plotter. This Raspberry Pi-based solution could potentially also act as a central control component for the boat and feed data directly to NMEA 2000 devices.

Infos

  1. "Watching TV on a Yacht" by Martin Loschwitz, Raspberry Pi Geek, issue 15, pg. 50, http://www.raspberry-pi-geek.com/Archive/2016/15/Using-the-Raspberry-Pi-for-a-multimedia-center-on-your-boat
  2. Logitech K400 Plus: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/wireless-touch-keyboard-k400-plus
  3. Navilock NL-402U: http://www.navilock.de/produkte/G_60095/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en
  4. Raspbian images: http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianImages
  5. OpenCPN: http://opencpn.org
  6. OpenCPN community packages: http://www.agurney.com/raspberry-pi/pi-chart
  7. Germany inland ENCs: https://www.elwis.de/Service/Inland-ENC-der-WSV/
  8. NOAA RNCs and ENCs: http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/staff/chartspubs.html
  9. USACE inland waterway IENCs: http://www.agc.army.mil/Missions/Echarts/ProductDownloads.aspx
  10. Canada digital maritime charts: http://www.charts.gc.ca/charts-cartes/digitalpricelist-listedeprixelectronique-eng.asp
  11. Australia digital maritime charts: http://www.hydro.gov.au/prodserv/digital/digital.htm
  12. Admiralty (UK) digital charts: http://www.ukho.gov.uk/ProductsandServices/ElectronicCharts/Pages/Home.aspx
  13. Chart sources: http://opencpn.org/ocpn/Basic_charts_chart-sources
  14. OpenSeaMap: http://www.openseamap.org/index.php?id=openseamap&L=1
  15. NMEA 0183: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NMEA_0183
  16. OpenCPN at Cruisers Forum: http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/

The Author

Martin Gerhard Loschwitz works as a cloud architect at SysEleven in Berlin, Germany, where he focuses on Distributed Storage, Software Defined Networking, and OpenStack. He spends his free time on his boat on one of the lakes located near Berlin, or at a bowling alley.

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