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Board » General Discussion » Sailplanner users can connect to brainaids NMEA proxy!!

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Currently brainaids NMEA proxy can only be used by software that supports NMEA through the TCP/UDP protocol. I figured a roundabout way to setup Sailplanner to connect to brainaids NMEA proxy. Sailplanner supports NMEA but through a serial port connection (COM1, COM2, etc) so all we need is a "bridge" between the COM port and the TCP/UDP broadcast. Attached is a detailed step by step method with illustrations, to get Sailplanner on the brainaid NMEA TCP/UDP bandwagon!!

Enjoy!

PS this only works for Windows users, as soon as I figure how to do it on a Macinstosh I'll post it!


--- Last Edited by Exmeromotu at 2010-07-24 06:27:45 ---
Attachments
Also don't forget that these tools could be very useful to the SOTP (or at least non-routing) crowd!

Any navigation package (many free ones) should be able to display you SOL boat in real-time. This gives you the possibility of using more advanced "drawing" tools to plan your sailing, and *AND* tools like crosstrack-error, proximity, exclusion zone, speed alarms...

= no more 3h naps on the beach on a bad update. Focus on work (sure) and get a nice 10min warning that a mark rounding is coming up. 3am nudge if you drift too far from your predicted track...

:)
Although I don't use routing software - I might do one day :-))

Thanks very much Exmer for charing this - admiring your skills

thanks 76 for your advices too

regards

Stu, who tries to cut off some time for (virt.) sailing :-/

edit: I anyway have to wait for the Mac- or Linux-Versions ;-)

--- Last Edited by StuArt at 2010-07-24 15:43:37 ---
<quote>
Also don't forget that these tools could be very useful to the SOTP (or at least non-routing) crowd!

Any navigation package (many free ones) should be able to display you SOL boat in real-time. This gives you the possibility of using more advanced "drawing" tools to plan your sailing, and *AND* tools like crosstrack-error, proximity, exclusion zone, speed alarms...

= no more 3h naps on the beach on a bad update. Focus on work (sure) and get a nice 10min warning that a mark rounding is coming up. 3am nudge if you drift too far from your predicted track...

:)</quote>


One could write a custom client to retrieve the data through the proxy. Here's a sample of the data one would get. Me, I just don't have the time to figure all that stuff out just now.

Philip
Attachments
For those interested in decoding those NMEA sentences and AIS messages, there is a lot of info on the protocols involved at gpsd.
_/)_/)_/)
The sea is lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to sail before I sleep, And miles to sail before I sleep.
This is not a complete tutorial, just the major steps I took to get my SOL position into Sailplanner on linux. Details are omitted, I just want to say it works (but not out of the box). I'm sure there are better ways, perhaps already reported in the forum.

Try to start the brainaid proxy. It failed for me not passing an argument to the proxy.
I had to copy the NMEAproxy.jnlp file to [~/.netx/cache/http/sol.brainaid.de
/sailonline/toolbox

Then I made it read only!
$ chmod -w ~/.netx/cache/http/sol.brainaid.de
/sailonline/toolbox/NMEAproxy.jnlp

Then I tried again.
$ javaws NMEAproxy.jnlp
press start
Horray, it worked. Lets create a virtual serial port connected to the TCP-stream.
$ mkdir ~/dev
$ socat pty,link=$HOME/
dev/vty0,waitslave tcp:localhost:5010

Create com3 under wine using the new virtual serial port.
$ ln -s ~/dev/vty0 ~/.wine/dosdevices/
com3

Start Sailplanner under wine (assuming you already installed it)
lock to nmea...
select com3
press check
(perhaps you need to restart the virtual serial port if it died (socat))
press OK

Enjoy! Or at least I do:-)

edit: changed ~ to $HOME for the socat command. As pointed out in later posts, the copying and chmoding of the jnlp file may be omitted if using sun-java6-jre instead of openjdk-6-jre et al.

--- Last Edited by stagfock at 2011-01-16 21:57:41 ---

_______________
edited to stop overlap of column


--- Last Edited by RainbowChaser at 2012-04-21 10:37:33 ---
WINDOZE ONLY SOLution...

Use a free app called NavMonPc :: http://www.navmonpc.com

This program is all you will need to send brainaid's NMEA data to as many apps as you can handle, as it forwards the data to either 3 virtual COM ports, or upto 10 network (TCP) connections using IP 127.0.0.1 and whatever port you specify in NavMon.

Also, this program has many features that make it worth using apart from this data forwarding use.

PS: Thank you SO much for the work on your site to provide all that data Eddie!
I help develop the client interface for the best online ocean racing sim there is... __/)/)_/)__
Very nice indeed, thanks Aaron!

--
Philip

socat is available for Mac OS X at darinports and there is also a graphical tool that does something similar at MultiCom
just remember that the device name needs to have a dot in it for Sailplanner to recognize it

--- Last Edited by Magnus Schoultz at 2010-12-31 15:59:49 ---

--- Last Edited by Magnus Schoultz at 2010-12-31 16:00:02 ---
Hi Magnus,
Can you please create a step-by-step instruction for the mac-version like Exmer's Windows tutorial? I would babysit your boat whenever you want ;-))

regards

StuArt/Berth

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