Zezo forum:

Post by Ben | 2020-12-01 | 21:27:12

Hi
Do you know how we can get the Dash NMEA stream from Google Hearth?

22 Comments

Post by zezo | 2020-12-01 | 21:30:48

I'm not sure you can stream anything live into Google Earth.

Post by Ben | 2020-12-01 | 21:37:02

Pity. It was just "for fun". See virtual sailors on the globe.

Post by Ben | 2020-12-01 | 21:38:24

Sorry. Translate by Google "Dommage" == > Pity ???

Post by zezo | 2020-12-01 | 21:45:27

It's possible to do after the fact, just not live. I've made some kml/kmz files for the VOR back in 2012 and it was fun to replay and watch how the legs develop. Like the picture when entering a race now, but with a slider.

like /leg6_pro_full.kmz

Post by BooBill | 2020-12-01 | 23:55:39

That is beyond awesome!

How can we do that with this race? One of the things I love to do is reconstruct and do a post race analysis or even mid race. What did I do right, what did I do wrong? What strategies should I keep in mind, kind of stuff.

Post by jf44 | 2020-12-02 | 10:05:56

Not so difficult when you get the boats position (Thanx to VR Dashboard!)
Look at that : http://voilevirtuelle.free.fr/vgv2020/ge/images/

If interested by such an app please send me a personal message...
I will provide you with the tools... but ot a direct link because I don't want to see my server explode!

Post by zezo | 2020-12-02 | 10:23:49

Well, we can collect the tracks at some point. Only question is if VR will keep the entire tracks or start truncating them.

The kml above is collected by resubmitting the user messages to my server.

In the first VOR (VR version) the boat info was not authenticated, so I had a "Enter boat name" dialog to get the position.

The second VOR (2012) was done by United Games. Different protocol and I wrote the first Chrome extension to access the data. Did not bother to parse the file client-side, so get all the info on the server. Messages included boat and friend positions, so collecting those in a database resulted in nice tracks for the most followed players even of they did not use the router.

Now we can do something similar with the tracks directly.

Only the extension has to be modified to collect the data, but we are in VR TOS violation at that point.

Post by Hardtack | 2020-12-02 | 11:39:42

How about providing an alternative nmea_proxy that forwards AIS messages to a central server?

Post by BooBill | 2020-12-02 | 19:37:10

jf44, what you did there is really cool. I'd love to give it a try.
Went to take you up on that offer and message you, but I don't see a boat name of jf44.

BTW, I have been routinely taking the .gpx from the Route Zezo.org extension, converting it to .kml and loading that into Windy.com. Also, adding the Regadata plugin displays the real boats and most importantly the ice limit in the same image.

The real bonus of that is it allows you to check the route against ECMWF.

Post by jf44 | 2020-12-04 | 23:43:11

My sailboat on The Vend�e Globe by Virtual Regatta is jf44-RKN.

The conversion from VR to Google Earth is not very useful as a tracking map, which will be better done by qtVml or such a router like Zezo.org

But for the fun I use collada models of the Imoca (very simplified), and display them in G.E. Each boat has the right hull and sails colors, and with the COG, SOG, TWA et TWS I can also compute roll and tilt so the images of the boats are more accurate.

All this stuff is a PHP application, with a database to keep the boats' positions;
If you can set up a LAMP or WAMP server I may send you the sources.

You can get my mail adress at the bottom of that web page:
http://voilevirtuelle.free.fr/vgv2020/ge/

Post by BooBill | 2020-12-05 | 01:17:12

Thanks JF44. I haven't written code since COBOL was a thing, so I'm going to say this is above my pay grade.

Looks like a job for Hardtack ;)

Post by Hardtack | 2020-12-05 | 14:40:42

I have a LAMP stack, kind of, but it doesn't run any of those curly-brace languages, only Lisp :-)

Post by jf44 | 2020-12-06 | 23:08:53

A Python version would be fine, but I have still to learn the language...
Perhaps for the next VG race :))

Post by zezo | 2020-12-06 | 23:41:41

What's wrong with https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php?

Post by jf44 | 2020-12-07 | 08:00:43

Why ? Have you an example ?
You have to be careful : only UTF-8 strings, only " as key or value delimiter (not ') because JSON is not Javascript, respect PHP's naming convention (e.g. the hyphen '-' is forbidden), compare to true or false with '===' and make use of json_last_error() in case of an error.

Post by zezo | 2020-12-07 | 08:43:36

I have it in perl /nmea_ws.perl.
Comes with own extension version /VRDashboard.zip. I don't run the proxy anymore.

A bit more complicated because it's multiuser version and tries to correlate the IP address of the NMEA connection with the data feed. Also uses websocket itself, not HTTP.

A "-" is not allowed in identifier names in most programming languages. Lisp is notable exception, but the game is written in C#

Post by jf44 | 2020-12-07 | 10:10:06

Thanx Cvetan!
One another language to learn :))
I'll look at that now. I think it will be inspiring.

Please a precision. The NMEA flow it intended to send his data to each peculiar boat which is connected to your server.

If I understand your post, to select which boat has sended a query you have to correlate the boat id with the IP adress of the client...

My app has not the same constraints, except if I would let anybody computes a map on the fly, which is a very different task... Of course if I had such a server I could also mimic the connections from a subset of boats and format a butch of NMEA messages, with all the appropriate data.

But my goal is more limited. What I need is the data of a subset of the fleet,
why I would use the AIS "friends" and "team" flow for my own boat, plus infos like sail, TWA, TWS and perhaps Foils and DTU...

The best is to get the data directly in the debuger like is doing the VR Dashboard extension, and set up a specific proxy.

Is that right ?

Cheers!

Post by zezo | 2020-12-07 | 22:07:07

Yes, you only need half of the code. Without the TCP listen stuff. Collecting the data would be just the main loop, with a 1-line SQL statement (something like 'creare or replace ...'), depending on your database. About 10 lines total.

Post by fab | 2020-12-07 | 10:08:58

Jean,

have you have a look at that: https://www.marinetraffic.com/p/google-earth ?

Xo Tromeul! <-- Private Joke

Post by jf44 | 2020-12-07 | 12:54:59

Yes. It's the same idea. But only with a list of friends boats on VR and 3D representations of the boats.

You can download one of my last maps here:
http://voilevirtuelle.free.fr/vgv2020/ge/montages/

Post by Retsam | 2020-12-07 | 11:20:54

Thanks fab: the marinetraffic map is awesome! I have the view on the bay from my window and now I can put the name on those vessels!

All boats of VG are there as 'Pleasure Craft', alas without time stamp and ID.