S/V Vibrant

Open Source system project

My goal in this project is three fold:
1) Learn all I can about the various marine systems I’ll be dealing with on Vibrant and the other boats we sail.
2) Build a hot pluggable nav system that I can use should the Raymarine MFD die while we are underway.
3) Build a portable nav system we can use on the various classic wooden boats we deliver or sail, many of which have very little in the way of tech.
Thinking I might be able to build one system that could do (1) and (2), not clear yet if that’s a good idea or what I want to do.
This is the Open Source distribution I’m currently testing:
This is the project page I am using for my reference implementation:
The set of supported applications and peripherals is extensive.
The discussion forum page is here:
I’m using a Raspberry Pi 5, after today’s discussion I’m considering getting a version complied to run with Linux on a Mini PC…
Here are a few pictures of the current prototype.
I put a one terabyte NVME drive on the Pi for speed and storage.
I have a Wegmatt dAISy 2+ dual channel AIS receiver, VFAN GPS and NooElec RTL-SDR connected in the current instantiation.
Also working on the waterproof case design…
Note the funky LCD resolution here.  I started with a large, high res LCD touchscreen screen for ease of development & switched to this smaller one to fit the case but haven’t gotten to adjusting the resolution for the new device yet.
Still thinking about what I’m going to do about mouse / keyboard for the production version, in the meantime the old Dell stuff is reliable if clunky…
More miscellaneous stuff:
While we were on the call I found radar_pi, which purports to connect OpenCPN with Garmin, Raymarine and Navico radar units:
I realized I have to go back and learn more about OpenCPN:
Good thread for a newcomer like me here:
And one more:
Gear that was mentioned on the call:
Also, my Oracle team does support for Raymarine / FLIR / Teledyne & I have a good connection there if that’s useful.
He did support of these devices for a LONG time, has encyclopedic knowledge and also a good connection to the open source community as well.
Tangentially, we are doing a cool project with them where we’ve ingested a signifiant portion of their documentation and are delivering various AI agents with pretty amazing results.
I’m thinking about doing this with all the documentation for Vibrant, it’s pretty easy and would be a handy way to have a quickly searchable reference (could even be audio I/O) that would be generally useful and could be very handy in an emergency…
For reference below is the list of electronics gear currently on Vibrant:
Raymarine 12 ‘ Axiom + at nav station
Raymairine 9” Axiom + at helm
Raymarine p70s Autopilot control at helm
Raymarine i50 speed display above companionway
Raymarine i50 Depth display above companionway
Raymarine wind speed and direction display above companionway
Raymarine close hauled display above companionway
Raymarine i70s multifunction display at nav station
Raymarine Quantum 2 Doppler Radar scanner, factory rebuilt 2024
Raymarine AIS700 Class B AIS Transceiver
West Marine waterproof handheld VHF
Icom IC-M502 VHF at Nav station
Icom MC802 SSB at nav station
Icom AT140 Auto tuner for SSB, with insulated backstay as antennae