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Quirino Rico
KAP Charts from OpenSeaMap for OpenCPN Each chart bundle contains several hundred charts in different scales from overview to harbour charts: Baltic Sea, British Channel, Mediterranean Sea West, Mediterranean Sea East, Adriatic, Gulf of Biscay, North Sea, Carribean, South China Sea, East China Sea, South Pacific, Magellan Strait, West Coast US, Northwest Passage, North Atlantic, Dutch Inland Waters, Great Lakes, Bay of Bengal.
Generally chart pictures in gif, jpeg, pdf, png, tif, bmp and other formats can be used, when properly geo-referenced, to generate raster charts. For the details about this process read the Chart Conversion Manual. Also, make sure to browse around the forum as there are a handful of interesting chart related threads.
Used prior to the BSB format, was used from the late eighties to mid nineties. While these charts cannot be used directly in OpenCPN, the chart-picture as such, can be extracted. These charts consists of many picture tiles in pcx format, more than 100 tiles is not unusual. The tiles can be merged to one big picture, and then used as any other picture, to make an OpenCPN compatible chart. For details on this process see the Chart Conversion Manualand Cruiser's Forum Postand the following posts in the forum. Script for merging PCX files to one picture.
The HDR format is from an era when computer-memory and processing power were less powerful than today, as a consequence these charts are not of the same quality as more modern charts. Furthermore, most of these charts are not using WGS 84 as reference datum. These charts should not be the first choice, but can be useful if nothing else is available.
The Hydrographic Chart Raster Format, HCRF, used by the United Kingdom Hydrographic Offices' ARCS (Admiralty Raster Chart Service). This is also due to proprietary encryption algorithms and copyright issues. UKHO is now alone in using this format, since New Zeeland switched to the BSB/Kap format and Australia no longer publishes official raster charts.
Charts from Mapmedia, Navionics, C-map (with the exception of CM93 version 2), Garmin and various other private vendors, are not supported, for the same reasons as for the other proprietary charts. It is not possible for users to convert these charts to an OpenCPN recognized format, but it is possible for these companies, to release OpenCPN plugins, if they wish.
Scaling Charts Use Scale tool to change chart scale.
Chart Quilting Display portions of charts at the same scale.
Chart Status Bar Chart Buttons for current charts at screen bottom.
Chart Information Right-click Chart Buttons at bottom of screen.
I have finally found a way to use nautical charts for plotting ROV position.
Thanks to OpenCPN Håkan!
Ship is showed on same chart, so moving ship after ROV is now easier.
Same info can be sent to plotter at helm.
Info like distance to ROV is possible
Solution:
-OpenCPN software with charts.
-Underwater GPS to have position of ROV into PC.
-Basic GPS (and headíng sensor) to position ship as usual, via serial port or UDP etc
Trick to get ROV position is to use NMEA string $RATLL via UDP for sending ROV position to OpenCPN. OpenCPN then thinks You are plotting a radar MARPA taget and displays that.
String is sent from Waterlinkeds modified Python NMEAOutput module and looks like this:
$RATLL,01,5603.370,N,01859.976,E,ROV,015200.36,T,*75
Where 01 is ship ID, lat, long, Shipname(ROV), GPS time, T is tracked, *75 is NMEA checksum
Bo
We've put several hundred hours into this project. If you'd like to help us provide more charts for the cruising community, even a small donation will help pay our extra costs to host and download these large files. Just click the Donate button on the left. PayPal makes it very easy. Thank you!
For those that use a software package capable of reading them, such as OpenCPN, o-charts offers the complete Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River Canadian charts for 30USD. This is an annual subscription.
My understanding from the Canadian Hydrographic Services (CHS) website is that while some of their nautical publications are now available in digital format free of charge, this does NOT apply to nautical charts. -shc.gc.ca/index-eng.html
It appears to me that these are the only free charts available and can be opened in my chart program but provide essentially no useful information. I guess either the web site hasn't been updated to reflect wider availability for free or the Canadians are not really giving up a large source of revenue. The prices are so steep that the only reasonable source for boaters is plotter collections or chart books.
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