Bareboat Necessities OS Documentation

Why use BBN OS? Some people use just commercial marine electronics on board, some ones use smart tablets and marine Wi-Fi multiplexers. All these solutions lack one important component - an onboard computer capable of monitoring and controlling all aspects of the boat systems, and capable of storing data. Some people put an Intel-based computer for it. Intel-based solutions are more power consuming. With BBN OS you can build a central boat computer meeting your needs. All on low power consuming raspberry pi with flexibility of adding countless choices of sensors to talk to all boat systems, Internet, local Wi-Fi, cameras, NMEA network, and a system able to decode marine radio protocols. Initially this project started from experiences of using OpenPlotter to improve user experience. BBN OS is free and open source. It is based on commonly used community supported open source projects such as SignalK, PyPilot, OpenCPN, and others. BBN OS graphical user interface will let you build a cockpit front-end to all functionality of the OS from chartplotting, dashboards, weather information, to media player, etc.

Download SD card image (~2.8Gb file):

https://github.com/bareboat-necessities/lysmarine_gen#download

Past major LTS releases:

https://github.com/bareboat-necessities/lysmarine_gen/releases/tag/v2024-09-18

https://github.com/bareboat-necessities/lysmarine_gen/releases/tag/v2023-08-17

https://github.com/bareboat-necessities/lysmarine_gen/releases/tag/v2022-08-03

Write the downloaded image to SD card. Minimum 32Gb SD card recommended. You can use Raspberry Pi Imager for that:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/

You do not need to explode .xz image file for it. You can load .xz file into RPI imager as is.

If your screen resolution is lower than 1024x600 you would need to manually set it in /boot/config.txt file, by mounting /boot partition of your SD card (on Windows its done just by inserting it into SD card slot and editing in a plain text editor).

Quality of SD card is essential for performance of your system. BBN OS comes with disk benchmarking tool. Good SD card would show about 45 MB/sec (or higher on pi4) read i/o speed, 90 MB/sec or higher on pi5. SSD drives would show much better results: 178 MB/sec read and 147 MB/sec write i/o speed or higher.

Insert SD card into raspberry pi SD card slot, plug-in a mouse and a keyboard, and power on. Wait for boot process to run GUI (about 2 mins).

Open Terminal from GUI and on the terminal command line:

For changing locale (ex: to en_US.UTF-8):

Default user and root passwords are changeme. You would want to modify it before your computer connects on-line to the Internet.

Open Terminal from GUI and on the terminal command line:

To change root password:

Keyboard layout controlled by pre-installed ibus application. To add a language:

If you have an SSD drive, and you would like to boot from it (which would be a better way, and it would greatly improve the performance of the system) then you can follow the steps below:

The OS image comes with utility called 'rpi-clone' preinstalled. If you have a custom case for your raspberry pi (Ex. DeskPi Pro), then you would need to install vendor drivers for your case per vendor instructions.

Open Terminal from GUI and your command line for rpi-clone should look like (check usage https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone as there might be nuances for your particular set up):

If you have NVMe disk, then instead of sda it will be named as nvme0n1 (or something like that, check /dev/ directory).

Follow the prompts.

Plugin your GPS USB mouse and OS should recognize it. Check:

If your gps shows as /dev/ttyLYS_gps_0, then edit /etc/default/gpsd file

and set

In many other cases you do not need to do anything.

Plugin your dAISy AIS receiver into USB and OS should recognize it. Check:

OpenCPN Plugins Documentation: https://rasbats.github.io/opencpn-plugins-manual/

OS image comes with several chartplotters:

with extensive set of plugins as well as weather GRIB file viewers

Do not forget to set up your ship parameters in SignalK and Vessel applications. They can come handy.

Also in OpenCPN Polar plugin pick a polar file for your boat from ~/Polars, /usr/share/opencpn/plugins/weather_routing_pi/data/polars/ or build it from your past voyages data recordings. It will be needed for weather routing, etc.

Polars are important for Weather Routing and Dashboard Tactics plugins.

SignalK manages its own updates. Login into SignalK Marine Data Server web UI application and perform updates via its app store.

For SignalK support visit: https://discord.gg/uuZrwz4dCS

Starting PyPilot server:

Apart from the official PyPilot documentation you will find this WiKi https://github.com/pypilot/workbook/wiki very useful as well.

Commercial PyPilot hardware: https://pcnautic.gitbook.io/autopilot/inhoud-autopilot-set

If you have pypilot arduino motor controller connected via GPIO pins you need to add

in your /boot/config.txt to disable conflicting bluetooth UART. Your motor controller will use that on-board UART.

Check:

/dev/serial0 must point to /dev/ttyAMA0

On bookworm version you also need to disable the hciuart service, which initialises the Bluetooth modem:

Serial console must be disabled too. Check /boot/cmdline.txt (/boot/firmware/cmdline.txt on Bookworm)

You will need to remove /dev/ttyAMA0 from /home/pypilot/.pypilot/blacklist_serial_ports to let pypilot probe that port. (otherwise, pypilot port-probing breaks bluetooth even if bluetooth is enabled)

PyPilot HAT is optional. It provides a remote IR control and a small LCD. Due to GPIO changes this hat is not supported on pi5. If you have pypilot hardware hat attached, then you will need to enable the following settings in /boot/config.txt

and enable pypilot hat service to start at boot time:

For hat display to work you need to specify correct driver (ex: nokia5110) in /home/pypilot/.pypilot/hat.conf. Edit this file when pypilot_hat service is not running.

Later hardware of pypilot hat creates /proc/device-tree/hat/custom_0 file from its firmware. You can do

to see hat configuration and its GPIO pins required to be set up and so on.

For steering by the wind set wind.sensors_height to your wind sensor height as pypilot tries to compensate for apparent wind created by boat motion.

There are three options:

You can add weather budgie desktop applet. Unfortunately it is linked to a fixed location which is fine for a day-sailor but doesn’t work for others.

Offshore sailors or even coastal cruisers should focus on using XyGrib and GRIB plugin for OpenCPN.

For real blue water sailors OpenCPN Climatology and OpenCPN weather routing plugins are essential.

Mediterranean GRIB files: https://openskiron.org/en/

Marine Weather Center: https://mwxc.com/

To install:

Documentation on setting it up and using it:

https://github.com/la5nta/pat/wiki https://getpat.io/

Video Series: Winlink on a Raspberry Pi https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1QTYT4Qo9cY98NFmxrTvtGyWI9pgxtFq

ARDOP for pi: https://www.cantab.net/users/john.wiseman/Documents/ARDOPC.html

The OS image comes with Mopidy, MPD server, MusicBox, Shairport-Sync (AirPlay) server. The default audio output set up to audio jack port.

The first place to start configuring boat interfaces would be SignalK. SignalK comes with many plugins to talk to many boat devices with the support of various protocols.

It’s possible to disable booting into GUI by running:

and selecting booting into the console under System Options / Boot - Auto Login.

OS image comes with many HAM radio applications, decoders for many marine specific signals and protocols. Many SDR products should work. Decoding is also possible using external HAM receivers connected via sound input port (USB sound card required as raspberry pi doesn’t have built-in sound input). Proper antennas required for correct reception.

HAM Radio menu contains a few applications useful especially for offshore sailors. If you do not have a cellular or a satellite connection, you still have SSB (and if you installed it SDR) radio. These applications will allow you (with some skill and set up):

BBN OS will help you to use Iridium Phone as a modem for low bandwidth Internet access, or to send periodic short burst data with use of a specially written SignalK plugin.

More on using Iridium as modem: https://agile4life.blog/2018/07/16/sailing-with-linux-nmea-gpsd-iridium/

Adding some OpenWrt LTE/4G router greatly improves your boat connectivity to the world near shore. You should definitely do it to have internet access from your boat.

The OS image gives you internet applications for:

For offshore sailors there are number of features preloaded into the OS image

They do require additional hardware, set up and dedication.

PyPilot based autopilots:

These features would be particularly interesting for offshore sailors:

Watching on-line (or listening) prepaid copyrighted content (Netflix, Amazon PrimeVideo, Google, Spotify, etc.) in a web browser as Chromium requires closed-source DRM libraries. On arm32 version of the OS you can install it from add-ons folder ~/add-ons/ by running:

Late versions of BBN OS include software for controlling drones. So if you have a drone (or a fleet of drones) you might be able to control them from the same BBN display.

The software included is APM Planner 2.0. See:

It supports MAVlink based autopilots including APM and PX4/Pixhawk:

List of supported drones:

https://ardupilot.org/planner2/docs/common-rtf.html

On the desktop click on the 'Commands' icon. You will see a menu from where you can perform restart/shutdown, and more.

Desktop can be customized by editing the JavaScript files in /var/www/bbn-launcher (i.e. constants.js).

PyPilot web client looks better in dark skin. Switch to the dark theme if it wasn’t done for you automatically.

You can add additional customizations which will be performed on system first boot by mounting OS image and editing /boot/first-boot.sh script. That script as its name suggests executes only once on the first boot.

See: https://github.com/bareboat-necessities/lysmarine_gen/issues

If GPS fix is lost in OpenCPN the first thing to try is to restart SignalK. You can do it from the touchscreen via desktop 'Commands' icon.

Do not create data loops with your data flows between OpenCPN, AvNav, SignalK, GPSd, Kplex, PyPilot.

Check /home/user/add-ons directory. It contains number of scripts for installing many additional programs which for one or another reason couldn’t be a part of the distribution image.

Few notable add-ons:

See:

Starting with BBN OS version 2021-10-02 you will have a firewall running on your system, and it’s enabled by default. The default firewall rules are:

As of 2021-10-04 Bluetooth seems good only for low speed devices. You likely to experience skipping playing music via on-board pi bluetooth.

Set it up to be on your boat Wi-Fi. You can also pair it with your pi via Bluetooth and play music via Amazon EchoDot, etc. Mopidy seems needs a restart to switch to Bluetooth playing.

Say "Alexa, pair a device". Proceed to device pairing. Make sure you close bluetooth settings window in BBN OS before playing music to avoid skipping.

QtVlm can be installed via add-ons:

You can install your Maritime Publications On-Board Library via add-ons:

Using preinstalled Kiwix application you can store offline Wikipedia and more on your boat computer.

You can install JellyFin via add-ons:

You can install HomeAssistant (for many BBN users their boat is their home) via add-ons. You need to be connected to Internet, and give 15 mins or so after the below commands finish:

HomeAssistant in BBN OS includes NMEA TCP integration. You might need to enable it by going into 'Settings/Devices and Services' in HomeAssistant Web UI, and clicking 'Add Integration'. Search for 'Boat' or '0183' and add 'Smart Boat 0183 TCP' integration with parameters

(TCP device name can be just unique name you pick)

More details here: https://github.com/SmartBoatInnovations/ha-smart0183tcp

It will also install EspHome. Url to access: http://localhost:6052

Examples of use cases:

https://boathackers.com/boat-energy-management-using-victron-and-home-assistant/

https://boathackers.com/dynamically-set-location-in-home-assistant-for-boats/

ESP32 devices can be managed using https://esphome.io

Yor system includes installed SolarThing. See more at https://github.com/wildmountainfarms/solarthing

Maiana AIS supported via add-ons

To monitor your Victron devices you can access

http://localhost:8000/app?host=venus.local&port=9001

Change the host and port in that URL to your Victron Venus OS device name and port.

Edit /usr/local/share/applications/victron.desktop file (or /var/www/bbn-launcher/constants.js on CoreMP135 version) to replace venus.local with host name or IP address of your Victron Venus (CerboGX) host.

When Internet is available you can use Menu link in App Menus→Utilities→Marine Life

There is an application to display basic knots. App Menus→Utilities→Knots

English version of ColReg is available under: App Menus→Utilities→ColReg

Sailing education links available under: App Menus→Internet→Nauticed Sailing Training

'Find a Crew' link available under: App Menus→Internet→Find a Crew

The beauty of Linux is that you can customize it for your needs in infinite ways. While this distro aimed to strike common need, you will find that number of post-install customization steps would be required. The key is to script those steps, make them non-interactive, make the steps requite NO GUI. In that case your set-up becomes REPRODUCIBLE in case of new OS image releases. You can share your post-install scripts, so the system can be improved and even more fine-tuned.

While the system supports touchscreens during set-up phase you would still want to have a regular wired keyboard and mouse attached to it as there is plenty of activities involved on the shell command line.

You do not have to be a software engineer to install the system. A mechanic, electrician, paralegal professional, civil engineer, money manager are few examples of people with different backgrounds who were able to install and set it up for their boats.

This is not my first build of the boat computer with raspberry pi. A lot of ideas can be taken from my older (2020 build which was based on OpenPlotter). For up-to-date build I would change few things:

For older hardware solutions (lot of it is still valid) see:

https://bareboat-necessities.github.io/my-bareboat/

Printing from Chromium is a bit inconvenient. You need to choose 'Print' menu, then scroll down and choose 'More Settings' and select 'Print Using System Dialog' which will let you choose a printer.

BBN OS has several programs to help you stay connected with friends via social networks and messaging applications via Internet.

SignalK comes with preinstalled plugin for saillogger.com

With Raspberry Pi4 power consumption of your system should be around under 4.5 watts without a monitor. A monitor depending on it’s size and backlight brightness (needed for sunlight readability) can add another 5 watts or even more. Human brain runs on about 12-25 watts for comparison.

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For a cabin monitor many people do not use special marine grade ones. If you have enough space on your nav station desk for a keyboard and a mouse, you might consider getting a screen without touch functionality.

For a cockpit display you need >1000 nit brightness for sunlight readability, waterproof (IP67 or more), touchscreen, with accessible backlight (brightness) control buttons for night sailing. You would need long HDMI and USB (for touch) cables to connect to raspberry pi below deck. There are even fiber optic solutions for that. They allow thinner cables (at additional cost). Bonus, if your touchscreen display comes with built-in speakers for alarms. Check Sihovision product line, if one of their products will suit you. Some examples:

SL7W 7" https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/sunlight-readable-7-inch-touchscreen-waterproof_60543830769.html

SL10W 10" https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Outdoor-display-9-7-inch-IPS_1600251157854.html

SL12W 12" https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/daylight-viewable-monitor-ip67-touch-marine_60718449450.html

SL113 13" https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Marine-displays-IP67-waterproof-13-3_62066633231.html

SL100W 10" https://www.sihovision.com/full-ip65-high-brightness-touch-monitor/waterproof-monitor-sl100w.html

More ideas from TouchThink: https://www.touchtecs.com/marine-monitor/ip65-sunlight-readable-marine-display-15-inch.html

Pick HDMI screen over DSI as they do not take extra GPIO pins which you might have other plans for. Also DSI monitors often require custom (often closed source) drivers from their vendors and as a result you are more likely to run into issues setting them up. Most touchscreens nowadays will be capacitive multitouch due to better durability and clearness.

DeskPi Pro v2 is a nice enclosure for your below deck Raspberry Pi4 with fast SSD interface and 12v input.

https://github.com/DeskPi-Team/deskpi

Advantech Uno 220 for Raspberry Pi4 looks good, however doesn’t come with SSD support.

One of the promising CM4 boards and computers is Waveshare Industrial IoT Mini-Computer Based on Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4:

https://www.waveshare.com/product/raspberry-pi/boards-kits/compute-module-4-cat/cm4-io-poe-4g-box.htm

Looks like can be a much better base for a boat computer than just regular Raspberry Pi4.

It comes with (and more):

Or Waveshare Mini-Computer Based on Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, Mini IO Board Version B

https://www.waveshare.com/product/raspberry-pi/boards-kits/compute-module-4-cat/cm4-io-base-box-b.htm

with a space for SSD.

To enable RTC clock if your Waveshare board has it you need to add into /boot/config.txt something like:

Another option is the board and a case from McuZone. The advantage of it is that it has no moving parts (just a cooling radiator).

For McuZone board you will need to add:

into /boot/config.txt before first boot to enable USB ports.

List of the boards: https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/boards_cm.html

Several of these products could be interesting for boating applications:

PyPilot supports these via RTIMULib2. Here is a list of supported units by RTIMULib2:

PyPilot Documentation recommends using 9 Dof (9 Degrees of freedom) IMU with icm20948.

Even without autopilot motor controller these sensors allow displaying roll, pitch, and yaw.

SignalK plugin for electronic compass WitMotion: https://github.com/W-Geronius/signalk-hwt901b-imu

See also: https://open-boat-projects.org/en/magne

There are several options:

OpenCPN Radar plugin reports support of the following radars:

Quantum/Quantum2 Radars from Raymarine seems are not supported by OpenCPN, nor are the Garmin Fantom radars, or Furuno units.

We didn’t have hardware to all these, so reports of successful installations and encountered issues are welcome.

Choose powered USB hub which doesn’t backfeed power into pi4, to avoid issue of pi4 not being able to reboot when USB hub is still 'on'.

If you do not plan to connect to your USB hub storage devices, cameras, network cards (high speed devices), then USB 2.0 hub will do the job. No need for USB 3.0 hub.

USB ports follow color convention:

The hub we like: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BBLL3MJ/ Aiibe 6 Ports Super High Speed USB 3.0 Hub Splitter

The Wi-Fi router you need is somewhat different from your home router. Your home router connects wired to Internet WAN, and it gives you local Wi-Fi. On a boat the situation reverses. Your WAN is the marina’s Wi-Fi and your Pi should (preferably) be wired into the router. These Wi-Fi routers are being sold as Travel Wi-Fi routers. Not all cheap Wi-Fi routers will give you the ability to connect to the marina Wi-Fi and share it on a boat. It’s better to choose the ones running OpenWrt operating system, which is Unix based and open-source. LTE is a very valuable feature.

Few recommended would be: GL.iNet (GL-X750 V2) Spitz router, Teltonika RUTX12 (dual SIM).

Others to consider: InHand Networks IR300 Compact Industrial Router, YeaComm Industrial or YeaComm Outdoor LTE Routers.

In SD card you will be looking at speed (i/o reads, i/o writes), durability, size. >32Gb is recommended.

SeaTalk1 is Raymarine proprietary protocol. Many popular Autohelm Raymarine autopilots use it. SeaTalk1 unlike NMEA 0183 is a bus allowing multiple talkers and multiple listeners of the same bus. To integrate it into your system you have a number of choices:

SeaTalk1 had been reverse engineered and a converter into NMEA is available at: https://github.com/MatsA/seatalk1-to-NMEA0183

https://github.com/Thomas-GeDaD/Seatalk1-Raspi-reader

https://github.com/yOyOeK1/seatalk4

https://github.com/AK-Homberger/Seatalk-Autopilot-Remote-Control

https://github.com/trlafleur/Fastnet

https://www.oppedijk.com/bandg.html

Widely supported. Many options to connect to pi.

USB/Serial:

Board:

TCP/IP:

NMEA 0183 Multiplexers working over Wi-Fi or Ethernet

Vendors:

Yacht Devices multiplexers stand out from others by also providing a web UI with a dashboard with gauges.

NMEA 2000 protocol was reverse engineered as a part of this project: https://github.com/canboat/canboat

Since then NMEA 2000 had been natively incorporated into SignalK as well.

Options to connect Pi to NMEA 2000 bus:

PCB boards/hats:

USB/Serial:

TCP/IP gateways:

Monitoring devices: - https://simarine.net/

OpenCPN TwoCan plugin has a list of compatible with it devices as well.

Stay away from devices which just convert NMEA 2000 into NMEA 0183. You need to feed NMEA 2000 into SignalK and be able to receive it too.

NMEA OneNet is Ethernet based with RJ-45 or X-Coded M12 8-pin (to pass smaller openings) connectors.

PoE (Power over Ethernet) allows powering devices with same data cables. It is a nice way for reducing the number of cables in your system.

Compared to NMEA0183, Topline can transmit significantly more data due to the compact binary data transmission and the high data rate of 38,400 baud.

NKE devices are designed and optimized for professional sports.

https://github.com/KristianJerpetjon/NkeToplineCpp

RayMarine protocol for wireless intruments.

https://github.com/Rodemfr/MicronetToNMEA

J1939 is a CAN-BUS protocol for monitoring automotive engines, but it’s also being used on boats. Usually it requires J1939 to NMEA 2000 gateways.

Vendors of such gateways:

Several options to connect:

USB:

Re-use GPS built-in into LTE router:

NMEA:

PCB Boards connected to Pi:

RTL-SDR, SDRPlay SDR, HackRF SDR, LimeSDR, and likely others. Interfaces USB, Ethernet.

Yaesu, Icom are the popular vendors within HAM community.

SDRs consume quite some power, so it’s better to connect them to pi via a powered USB Hub (in case of USB interface).

Raspberry Pi OS supports NVMe and SATA SSDs with an appropriate extension board, or a Pi case, and their vendor’s driver.

NVMe apparently doesn’t give much performance boost over SATA for pi4 with an exception to CM4 (Pi4 Compute Module) performing better on writes with NVMe drives. pi4 internal interface is the bottleneck for transfer rate speed.

Booting from NVMe drives got supported by linux kernel on pi4 just recently (some bugs might remain). See https://youtu.be/4Womn10v71s for instructions on booting from NVMe drives (while this feature is still in beta).

Perform a benchmark of your SSD after installation with correct drivers. Make sure it falls into expected range.

SSD is also less prone to data corruption on sudden power cut-offs than SD cards.

USB stick drives (flash drives) performance is not as high as NVMe and SATA SSDs.

There are reports that PC Windows software for WIB2/3 can be run on Raspberry Pi with Box86 and Wine: https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/navtex-plugin-251561-3.html#post3533558

Moitessier HAT has a closed source kernel driver. Contact Moitessier HAT vendor for a driver for your kernel version and with it the HAT will work.

Raspberry pi doesn’t have clock module to keep the time when it’s off, so you might consider adding one.

There are a few common i2c RTC modules:

Make sure there are no conflicts in addresses with your other i2c devices. Other devices usually have at least one option for switching to another address to avoid conflicts.

As Raspberry Pi doesn’t have an audio input, for use with SSB radio you might want to have an additional sound card which has both audio in and out. There is a good selection of options, but check reviews and the compatibility with Raspberry Pi4.

Using ESP32 controllers and a bit of micro python programming you can connect all kind of sensors to your system. One of product lines we like is from m5stack.com, and another is Wio Terminal by seeedstudio.com.

M5Tough: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-tough-esp32-iot-development-board-kit

Our m5stack based boat display: https://github.com/bareboat-necessities/my-bareboat/tree/master/m5-boat-display

Here is a dinghy location tracker idea. https://www.seeedstudio.com/LoRa-GPS-Tracker-with-Wio-Terminal-p-5182.html (Needs some work on a waterproof enclosure for a transmitter, and reporting the dinghy location via AIS NMEA data stream to the mother ship’s chartplotter). WIO terminal is not esp32 though.

To program ESP32 for communicating with SignalK you can use SignalK SensESP library: https://github.com/SignalK/SensESP

SensESP allows connecting many sensors:

SignalK Raspberry Pi 1wire plugin supports connecting multiple DS18B20 1-wire temperature sensors.

Sonoff Switches - Supported by SignalK plugin.

Ecowitt weather sensors - Supported via SignalK plugin.

Shelly https://shelly.cloud/ - Supported via SignalK plugin.

EmpirBus NXT https://www.empirbus.com/ - Supported via SignalK plugin.

ZigBoat https://www.zigboat.com/

Keep in mind that most Wi-Fi IoT devices will not work on 5GHz Wi-Fi. They usually require 2.4GHz Wi-Fi bands.

List of supported drones:

https://ardupilot.org/planner2/docs/common-rtf.html

The Raspberry Pi can receive and send IR signals using its GPIO pins.

You configure which pins your IR diode is connected to in /boot/config.txt like this:

LIRC (https://lirc.org/) software is a part of BBN OS. You need to configure it for your IR remote.

Actuators discussed in this thread: https://forum.openmarine.net/showthread.php?tid=3468

Open Boat Projects: https://open-boat-projects.org/en/

There is a great variety of antennas of a boat. Directional vs omnidirectional, active vs passive, internal (some are just a part of a circuit on a PCB) vs external, grounded vs ungrounded, receiving-only vs receiving/transmitting, and a wide variety of shapes.

Brief explanation:

Check with commands:

should show addresses on the bus, then

should show that pypilot service as enabled, running and has no errors.

should show stream of heading NMEA data from pypilot.

should show both GPS and heading NMEA sentences from SignalK.

Also, check this FAQ for common berryGPS issues:

https://ozzmaker.com/berrygps_imu-faq/

disabling echo on serial port might be required, as well as enabling ZDA NMEA time sentence.

u-blox GPS receivers have extensive configuration. Check: https://gpsd.io/ubxtool-examples.html

There is a script to install various additional Wi-Fi cards drivers

Using rclone you can store and sync your files on many cloud vendors storage. More: https://github.com/rclone/rclone

There are few programs (installed) you can use for backups:

Install GPS2IP application on your smartphone. Start it and enable GPS2IP in it. Your phone should be on the same local network as your boat computer. In SignalK add gps2ip_on_smartphone NMEA TCP connection to the IP address shown in GPS2IP app and the port specified there (usually 11123). Your phone ip address should be a static address. So make sure it’s mapped to a static address on your Wi-Fi networks with a MAC address of your phone.

If you have a smartphone on board then you can use it as a source of NMEA GPS data and Internet provider for all your boat devices connected to your boat computer.

Raspberry Pi comes with two HDMI outputs. However, its software is still not able to handle two heterogeneous displays properly. The hardest case is when one is a touchscreen and another is not, and they have different screen resolutions, and a mouse attached which needs to flow from one screen workspace to another workspace of a secondary screen. Another challenge is at boot time. What if one screen is powered and another is not, but a user decides to turn power on the secondary one later. Raspberry Pi OS seems unable to cover all these scenarios (nor other linux distributions at the current state).

You can set up which programs you want to autostart when desktop comes up in Administration→Budgie Desktop Settings. Many users would probably want OpenCPN and KIP Dashboard right away.

With higher resolution monitors you might want to adjust font size and UI elements to be bigger on your screen.

For seamless switching for Wi-Fi client from one access point to another you can set up all access points with the same SSID and credentials on different radio frequency channels.

Raspberry Pi has built in hardware which allows automatic restarts in case it freezes.

To enable this functionality you would need to add:

into /etc/systemd/system.conf, reboot, then check watchdog:

To test:

More details here: https://pysselilivet.blogspot.com/2021/10/raspberry-pi-watchdog-made-simple.html

If you get this message likely there is another process which opened /dev/ttyXXXX. To find out the source of the conflict you can use:

Once you disable a process from using a serial port you are troubleshooting, you should be able to just

and see the data flow.

If it shows some unexpected binary data for a text protocol you can (and should) experiment with baud rate.

or

or another program

IMU PCBs are marked with X-Y-Z labels. There are two conventions:

Check what your IMU shows according to the diagram on its board. Mount your IMU in a waterproof box outside your Pi away from magnetic fields, and close to midline of the vessel.

This is what I had to do to set up WaveShare 10 dof v2 © IMU and baro/temp sensors.

After connecting 4 wires to Pi GPIO pins (as per vendor instructions) for IMU to work I just needed to restart pypilot.

For baro/temp sensors (which are part of Waveshare 10 dof) I had to activate BMP280/BME280 plugin in SignalK. I put 'outside' into SignalK path. And set polling period to 20 seconds. After that I restarted SignalK and got the values in SignalK data feed.

Making a backup copy of your disk is recommended before doing big changes to your system.

Start OpenCPN and update catalog in Plugin Download Manager. Then update plugins one by one.

Open Source Tripwire® is a security and data integrity tool for monitoring and alerting on file & directory changes. See: https://github.com/Tripwire/tripwire-open-source

Install:

Your NTP server is chrony. Edit /etc/chrony/chrony.conf and add a line with 'allow' directive

(or better allow followed by your subnet address). Save the file and restart chronyd

You need to set up fixed resolution using

Without it VNC would show message that it couldn’t show desktop.

NoMachine might ba a better alternative to VNC.

Download and install NoMachine for Raspberry arm64 DEB (Bullseye) from https://download.nomachine.com/download/8.1/Raspberry/nomachine_8.1.2_1_arm64.deb

Install command:

Install NoMachine on the connecting client. For cloud version configuration see: https://www.nomachine.com/all-documents

https://peyanski.com/connecting-cloudflare-tunnel-to-home-assistant/

AirMail is a radio mail program for sending and receiving messages via Pactor over HF radio, either via the ham radio system or participating marine and commercial services. It can communicate with PACTOR modem and other HF radio devices.

To install AirMail on Raspberry Pi with Bullseye follow this guide: https://bareboat-necessities.github.io/my-bareboat/airmail-install.html

To install AirMail on Raspberry Pi with Bookworm follow this guide: https://bareboat-necessities.github.io/my-bareboat/airmail-install-bookworm.html

SAS.Planet is a popular in offshore sailing community free and opensource program to prepare free off-line raster charts for OpenCPN from GoogleEarth and others satellite images. More on the subject:

http://svocelot.com/Cruise_Info/Equipment/mbTiles.htm

And some prepared charts: http://svocelot.com/Cruise_Info/Equipment/KAP_Downloads.htm

To install SAS.Planet on Raspberry Pi with Bullseye follow this guide: https://bareboat-necessities.github.io/my-bareboat/sasplanet-install.html

To install SAS.Planet on Raspberry Pi with Bookworm follow this guide: https://bareboat-necessities.github.io/my-bareboat/sasplanet-install-bookworm.html

Another program used for creating DIY charts and mbtiles is QGIS. To install:

https://github.com/vkohaupt/vokoscreenNG

Also, the link provides a method to estimate true wind from course over ground and actual true heading based on apparent wind measurements.

https://bareboat-necessities.github.io/my-bareboat/bareboat-math.html

/boot/config.txt contains most important settings for your monitor. You might need to adjust them manually.

See:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/config_txt.html#video-options

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/config_txt.html#common-display-options

Here are few tip to resolve most common issues. (For touch related issues see different parts of this document)

Common issues:

HDMI-A-1 - name of your screen

1280x720 - its resolution

60 - refresh frequency in Hz

/boot/config.txt needs setting:

For XServer resolution add into your GUI start-up script (such as openbox autostart, etc)

There are reports that putting

into /boot/config.txt works. However, it might be specific to a monitor model.

https://www.touchtecs.com/ produces reasonably priced touchscreen, which can be used in a cockpit.

The product is coded as TouchThink TPC-CD-M101, but you have to spec out your order precisely:

udevadm info reports this device name as "WingCool Inc. TouchScreen"

You can also request an embedded version with EDATech CM4 module built-in:

https://www.edatec.cn/en/Product/Camera_Modules/2019/0826/76.html

and customize interfaces. For example, you can have Ethernet, USB, I2C on the back.

Install Ubuntu 16.04.7 64-bit on PC. Run from shell: