Why I'm building this
I spent 36 years writing software for others. Now I’m retiring to go sailing, and the first thing I did was look at my navigation options.
There’s a gap. On one side is OpenCPN: free, capable, and trusted by serious cruisers, but it asks a lot of a newcomer. On the other there are the hardware makers like Garman, Raymarine, with expensive solutions that don’t integrate with my boat the way I would like. There are polished phone and tablet apps that don’t run on Pi or my hobbie hardware, and I pay for charts that they get for free.
What I wanted was a plotter that:
- runs on cheap, low-power hardware that with a 12V power-supply
- easy to use, touchscreen first, but offers the features we all want
- paid charts are easy to download and update. NOAA charts are free.
So I started building one. With the help of AI, I have made progress beyond my wildest dreams. Today the OpenWater runs on three hardward platforms: PC, a RK3399 based Panel PC, and Raspberry Pi.
Now I realize my biggest challenge is getting charts from a trusted source. A chartplotter is useless without charts and, outside of the US, this is a real problem.
Who this is for
Sailors who want something that just works on hardware they are willing to experiment with. I will always have my boat’s primary chartplotter as well has paper charts,
What’s next
Over the coming weeks I’ll write about the hardware, the goals and limits of the project, and what’s working on the bench. If you sail and have opinions about chartplotters, I’d like to hear them.