About OpenCPN
OpenCPN is a Chart Plotter/Navigator...You can download and get info about it on:
http://www.opencpn.org
Everything written below is not valid anymore, and has only historical and sentimental value...
(there is a 'dashboard' plugin in OpenCPN now, which does about the same)
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If you want to have more feeling about what the GPS is giving you and you're using Windows as OS, then you can use the OpenCPN GPSd FrontEnd I wrote.
On the right you can see what kind of views there are possible.
They are all sizeable (or switched off) to fit your need.
They can be fixed after positioning to avoid accidental replacing.
They can be "AlwaysOnTop" so you can use OpenCPN full-screen and still see the views.
They can be dimmed in 4 steps from 100% till 25% for night sailing.
Ands the best feature: you can see if the GPS receiver is working properly and if you disconnect, it gets reconnected fully automatically.
The new release is 1.3.2 (6/19/2010) and can be downloaded from here (1.6MB).
Release 1.2.6 has a rounding problem when the minutes are between 50 and 60...
Release 1.2.7 has a registry problem with non English Windows versions.
Release 1.2.8 has no error suppression for faulty COM drivers (error 8020).
Release 1.2.9 has no NMEA debugging screen.
Release 1.2.10 tries to solve a problem from one user
Release 1.2.11 has an improved analog compass (more like a real compass)
Release 1.3.1 is compatible with OpenCPN 1.3.4 where a new GPSd command is used.
Release 1.3.2 uses normal English for COG (sorry I overlooked!)
A simple install manual is here.
Please return any comment to the mail-address seen at the bottom of the program.
