Hi @EliotBR and @rafael.lehmkuhl
Keeping in mind that XYZ are only starting to move over to Cockpit and haven’t been able to test it on a job yet. Also apologies if I’m over explaining here, you guys are the experts, and this might be very obvious. But I don’t know how much my experience and use cases differ from other peoples.
Request
I see you guys are working on showing the position of the ground control station, but would it also be possible to display heading of the GCS when data is available? On a boat, UDP NMEA heading data (HDG/HDT/HDM) is often available, as well as GGA.
Use-cases
- Sense check of USBL data: Displaying the vessel’s orientation on the map provides an immediate sense check of USBL data, you can see where the ROV tether is going and compare that to the map view.
- Obstacle Avoidance: Avoiding a thruster/propeller or other snag hazards on the boat, or generally staying to one side to avoid going under the hull.
- Communication: Currently a spotter has to convert their communication to cardinal directions: “come to north-east”. But it would be much easier to say: “come to vessel starboard” or fore/aft etc.
Currently, we get around this by having physical compasses onboard, but this setup can quickly become complicated.
Further Detail
Blueprint Pinpoint (USBL software) allows taking in NMEA position and heading of the boat but doesn’t allow passing in ROV heading. Their unit designed for small ROVs (x010) just shows up as a dot rather than an arrow in the Pinpoint software, so it can’t be easily used for navigation.
Sonardyne Marksman is similiar (though there might be a way to send ROV heading data to marksman by converting Mavlink to NMEA).
If Cockpit can take in vessel position and heading via UDP, along with ROV position and heading (from the ROV), we would be able to use the Cockpit map as our only orientation source which would be fantastic.
| Type of Data | Source | Achievable in USBL Software | Possible integration in Cockpit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vessel Position | NMEA | ✓ | ? |
| Vessel Heading | NMEA HDT/HDG/HDM | ✓ | ? |
| ROV Position | NMEA from USBL software | ✓ | ✓ |
| ROV Heading | ROV | ✗ | ✓ |
Other references worth mentioning
I see some great work by Willian in the qgroundcontrol github that solves this problem completely.
But the functionallity sees to have been disabled at some point.
Also @Boko has created a neat workaround in OpenCPN to solve this.
And @odedezra has a QGIS solution, which might be very useful as an ultra flexible GIS solution.