Signal K is an open source server / data format for marine electronics, often paired with OpenPlotter for building custom nav and monitoring systems with web standards (JSON, Websockets and HTTP).
My engineering sense says RPi isn’t a good choice here, there’s a lot of potential failures that could happen, from a corrupted sd card, to overheating, harsh environment, among others, an industrial mini PC with proper protection and resources as well would be far better.
I keep my rpi in a pelican case that I modified to include an opening port for the NMEA connection. It gets all its power/data from the single connection which has a mechanical connection as well.
I have over 5000 nautical miles logged (thanks to a very nifty influxdb integration as part of open plotter) using this set up since ~2021, and so far it’s held up better than I could have guessed. I keep a spare pi and sds on board but have never actually needed them. My use case is long distance races, mostly in sub tropics/temperate areas, and I’ve had limited exposure to really hot air temp (say 90F and up in the tropics which is where I could see SDs starting to fail)
Signal K server is platform agnostic and runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows. Also available on Victron’s Venus devices, if you want off the shelf rugged hardware.
> My engineering sense says RPi isn’t a good choice here, there’s a lot of potential failures that could happen
Amen to that.
I blame the YouTube influencers posting all the RPi content that would make you believe you can run the world on RPi. Some of the shit they post is truly dumb ... Ceph clusters on RPi ? Rather you than me !!!
I once experimented with Pi's just for a fun unimportant home-server project. I got sick and tired of all the dumb failure modes, even when I expressly went out and bought high quality industrial SD cards, went above and beyond to minimise SD card IO etc. And that was just the SD card issues.... Never again.
HN crowd maybe doesn't appreciate it, but the marine sensor networking world, route plotting, and related tasks are an atrocious cesspool of overpriced, weirdly incompatible proprietary solutions.
Regular people save literally tens of thousands of dollars per install by going open source in this space, and end up with superior toolkits.
I won't say we ended up with anything superior, but we definitely benefited on cost as you mention! We have an intro writeup of our experience using OpenPlotter and a Raspberry Pi-based setup here.
Something also not often realized is that many, many sailboats are actually quite old (20, 30, 50 years!) and so are their on-board electronics. Any chance to update wiring, instruments, diagram out on-board electronics, etc. is probably a really good opportunity for nav system and overall boat maintenance.
In the US Commercial Tug & Barge market, Rose Point Navigation (out of Redmond, WA) has a near 100% saturation of the navigation software market. Why does nobody disrupt them? The overlap between experts in software and experts in vessel navigation is pretty low. Take a look at the technical specifications of their platform here and see if you can crack that out in a weekend:
https://www.rosepoint.com/rose-point-ecs/
In recreational vessels, our needs are more basic, but even us geeks may be more prone to shell out $500 - $2000 to Garmin or Raymarine for a hardened chart plotter MFD that "just works", is waterproof, and robust at least in the nav function. I got a "deal" on a Raymarine Axiom Pro which has both touchscreen and a keypad mode for when the rain interferes with the display, has nav, ais, radar, sonar display, engine gauges, and tons of other features, it is running some version of Android. It's really good honestly. When the wind is howling and the waves are high, it's not necessarily a good time to do some hacking and bug hunting on the nav platform. I do plenty hacking on my boat in the sensor integration world, but that's another story...
People get pretty far with tablet apps these days (literally), and there is a good market for the development of the apps. Hardware integration is always the challenge.
See 59-north for examples of offshore sailing schools who seem to have found a good mix of modern and reliable
And for anyone wondering about an opportunity to shake up the market just estimate TAM and you'll see quickly why boat stuff is priced at such a premium.
The number of people using things like Open plotter is even smaller, but still greatly appreciated by all!
I had one on my last boat (though in a space that was primarily air conditioned all the time. Had another on my balcony running a Marine Traffic AIS station for 6 years that was ‘weatherproofed’ with an unsealed ziploc bag. No issues.
I have always wondered why, in the world of millionaires and billionaires and yachts, why plotters like these have such ancient ugly 80s graphics. There are literally decades of UI enhancements, both functional and cosmetic, that could modernize these things. Im talking about the elite of the elite who will spare no expense at bespoke designed watches, monogram clothes, cars, etc. So it always just boggles my mind why this class of software languishes is in mediocrity.
and you would think there would be thousands of developers eager to work on something like this. Being able to actually test ride boats, and live a more adventuous lifestyle while putting their engineering skills to practice.
We would have something purpose made from raymarine/garmin/whoever hard-mounted to the steering station networked into the various sensors onboard. There would be at least one redundant display elsewhere (out of the weather in the case of boats steered from deck). We would never go for something on a raspi. Some boats will have the sensor canbus hooked into a computer to use additional software. The purpose made displays are all sleek touchscreen systems that look more like a Tesla interface than this raspi thing.
As far as UI and graphics: They are modeled on what actual paper charts look like (which is standardized, and what mariners are trained to use). These are systems designed as a safety tool first, and iterating through the latest design fads every 2-3 years to make things pretty is unsafe. I want my chart-plotters and tools to be near universal in symbology and interface, and that is what they have done.
> I have always wondered why, in the world of millionaires and billionaires and yachts, why plotters like these have such ancient ugly 80s graphics.
First because on a billionaire's yacht, there is a crew of 20 doing various jobs, 3 of whom do shifts on the bridge. So if you want to know where you are, you just pick up the phone to the bridge and bark at whatever poor sucker is on duty (or you bark at the person serving you drinks who then relays it up the ranks).
Second, on a billionaires yacht they already have large fancy displays with less ugly graphics.
Finally I would hazard a guess that (at least some of) the software "languishes in mediocrity" due to the safety certifications.
In that class of boat, the owner is not the one operating it. Many times they literally wouldn’t even know how to start the engines much less interact with the ships systems.
[+] [-] alexburke19|2 years ago|reply
http://signalk.org/
Has an excellent community of developers and hardware components.
[+] [-] nomand|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tamimio|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lbrindze|2 years ago|reply
I have over 5000 nautical miles logged (thanks to a very nifty influxdb integration as part of open plotter) using this set up since ~2021, and so far it’s held up better than I could have guessed. I keep a spare pi and sds on board but have never actually needed them. My use case is long distance races, mostly in sub tropics/temperate areas, and I’ve had limited exposure to really hot air temp (say 90F and up in the tropics which is where I could see SDs starting to fail)
[+] [-] tkurki|2 years ago|reply
https://www.victronenergy.com/live/venus-os:large
[+] [-] nine_k|2 years ago|reply
I wonder if industrial-strength RPi clones / variants exist. The demand is certainly there.
[+] [-] tylerflick|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] keraf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] traceroute66|2 years ago|reply
Amen to that.
I blame the YouTube influencers posting all the RPi content that would make you believe you can run the world on RPi. Some of the shit they post is truly dumb ... Ceph clusters on RPi ? Rather you than me !!!
I once experimented with Pi's just for a fun unimportant home-server project. I got sick and tired of all the dumb failure modes, even when I expressly went out and bought high quality industrial SD cards, went above and beyond to minimise SD card IO etc. And that was just the SD card issues.... Never again.
[+] [-] slow_typist|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matteocarnelos|2 years ago|reply
https://github.com/metisvela/sailtrack
It’s a similar project, but specifically designed for racing dinghies. It focuses on modularity and performance analysis.
[+] [-] pnut|2 years ago|reply
Regular people save literally tens of thousands of dollars per install by going open source in this space, and end up with superior toolkits.
[+] [-] kepa|2 years ago|reply
https://sailingcourage.xyz/projects/plotter/
Something also not often realized is that many, many sailboats are actually quite old (20, 30, 50 years!) and so are their on-board electronics. Any chance to update wiring, instruments, diagram out on-board electronics, etc. is probably a really good opportunity for nav system and overall boat maintenance.
[+] [-] Kozmik1|2 years ago|reply
In recreational vessels, our needs are more basic, but even us geeks may be more prone to shell out $500 - $2000 to Garmin or Raymarine for a hardened chart plotter MFD that "just works", is waterproof, and robust at least in the nav function. I got a "deal" on a Raymarine Axiom Pro which has both touchscreen and a keypad mode for when the rain interferes with the display, has nav, ais, radar, sonar display, engine gauges, and tons of other features, it is running some version of Android. It's really good honestly. When the wind is howling and the waves are high, it's not necessarily a good time to do some hacking and bug hunting on the nav platform. I do plenty hacking on my boat in the sensor integration world, but that's another story...
[+] [-] sails|2 years ago|reply
See 59-north for examples of offshore sailing schools who seem to have found a good mix of modern and reliable
https://www.sailmagazine.com/cruising/navigating-by-tablet
The only thing I don’t like about a tablet is that it will ruin your night vision. Integrated marine electronics usually cater to that pretty well.
[+] [-] Difwif|2 years ago|reply
The number of people using things like Open plotter is even smaller, but still greatly appreciated by all!
[+] [-] benob|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brk|2 years ago|reply
I had one on my last boat (though in a space that was primarily air conditioned all the time. Had another on my balcony running a Marine Traffic AIS station for 6 years that was ‘weatherproofed’ with an unsealed ziploc bag. No issues.
[+] [-] Solvency|2 years ago|reply
and you would think there would be thousands of developers eager to work on something like this. Being able to actually test ride boats, and live a more adventuous lifestyle while putting their engineering skills to practice.
[+] [-] dghlsakjg|2 years ago|reply
We would have something purpose made from raymarine/garmin/whoever hard-mounted to the steering station networked into the various sensors onboard. There would be at least one redundant display elsewhere (out of the weather in the case of boats steered from deck). We would never go for something on a raspi. Some boats will have the sensor canbus hooked into a computer to use additional software. The purpose made displays are all sleek touchscreen systems that look more like a Tesla interface than this raspi thing.
As far as UI and graphics: They are modeled on what actual paper charts look like (which is standardized, and what mariners are trained to use). These are systems designed as a safety tool first, and iterating through the latest design fads every 2-3 years to make things pretty is unsafe. I want my chart-plotters and tools to be near universal in symbology and interface, and that is what they have done.
[+] [-] traceroute66|2 years ago|reply
First because on a billionaire's yacht, there is a crew of 20 doing various jobs, 3 of whom do shifts on the bridge. So if you want to know where you are, you just pick up the phone to the bridge and bark at whatever poor sucker is on duty (or you bark at the person serving you drinks who then relays it up the ranks).
Second, on a billionaires yacht they already have large fancy displays with less ugly graphics.
Finally I would hazard a guess that (at least some of) the software "languishes in mediocrity" due to the safety certifications.
[+] [-] brk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SergeAx|2 years ago|reply