We are 1 year old!

We just had an anniversary, which passed by somewhat unnoticed. On Jan. 31 2009 a first public version of PolarView became available. I was so busy working on new features for the next version, I forgot about this date.

It was a long way from there to the product that exists today, hopefully a better application. However, we are far from perfect – and a lot more work lies ahead.

Congratulations to us as well as to all our users. You, guys, are the reason this product exists.

PolarCOM “True” Wind Calculation

When used with “relative” (apparent) wind data source, PolarCOM provides two modes of “true” wind calculation. These modes are labeled “STW” (Speed Through Water) and SOG in the configuration. STW is a “traditional” method, used by most hardware wind instruments. It needs no GPS input and requires STW and HDG (your vessel heading) to calculate “true” wind. It also results in an approximation of “true” wind.

SOG mode provdes more precise “true” wind calculation, but it also requres COG as well as HDG. That means you still need a heading sensor to calculate “true” wind – having only GPS input without heading is not sufficient.

If you are interested in explanation as to why that is, read on:

Let’s say you have the following -
1. Relative apparent wind (from VWR/MWV NMEA sentence) as delivered by windvane
2. GPS information including COG/SOG.
3. nothing else

Consider this – your vessel is heading in some direction which is most likely NOT aligned with COG. Relative wind is a vector that you can calculate based on a coordinate system that has boat heading as one axis (and another axis perpendicular to it).

On the other hand your SOG (and SOG induced “wind”) is a vector that by itself can only be considered in a system with one axis along the COG (and another perpendicular).

Without heading there is nothing to reconcile these two systems and no way to do any reasonable operations on these vectors. You need heading to convert one of these vectors to the coordinate system of the other.

Here is a practical example using PolarCOM. The first set of dials (img 1) shows COG and heading that differ by 20 degrees. The true wind is calculated here based on SOG (and using both COG and HDG to adjust vectors). You can see true wind both relative to the boat (second dial from the left) and as an absolute direction (last dial on right). There is no STW (as the heading dial shows).

Img 1

On the second image (img 2) I adjusted heading to match COG. This is what would effectively happen if you used SOG for true wind calculation but did not have an adjustment angle (and assumed direction of travel matching heading).

It is quite clear that true wind resulting from such calculation is not the same as the one that results from properly accounting for COG/HDG difference. And the difference is not insignificant – 30 degrees and about 40% stronger.

Img 2

Incidentally, third picture (img 3) shows calculations using STW and heading. I set STW to be equal to SOG, which is not necessarily true, but it helps make an example simpler. As you can see it is also incorrect, but the result is essentially the same as when using SOG alone without proper heading. I.e. there is no gain in calculation precision.

Img 3

Linux Installation Instructions

Linux version of PolarView/PolarCOM requires no specific installation process. Download the installation archive to your hard drive, then follow the steps shown in the next screen capture. Click on the image for better view.

Screen Capture of PolarView Linux Installation

Your Linux distribution must be “sufficiently modern” and have GTK2 available.

32 bit vs. 64 bit

Our applications are provided in “32 bit” version for widest compatibility. This allows our products to work on both 32 bit and 64 bit systems. On Linux, many 64 bit distributions do not come preinstalled with 32 bit compatibility libraries, so you may need to install these libraries before using PolarView or PolarCOM.

- Ubuntu & Debian users need to install one compatibility package. The following command usually does the trick: sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

- Fedora & RedHat users have a few more steps to take, see the following link for details: http://beginlinux.com/blog/2009/09/installing-32-bit-support-into-64-bit-fedora-11/

PolarView 1.2/PolarCOM 1.2/PolarIS 1.2

The 1.2 release is an important maintenance release. It addes a few new features, and numerous improvements and fixes for user-reported issues. This release also brings up to date our Linux product versions with complete PolarIS functionality now available to Linux users. In addition, Mac version is now a universal binary supporting both Intel and PowerPC (G4) Mac systems.

PolarView/PolarIS
- Display bearing and distance on each leg of current and navigation route
- Route reverse option
- Improved vessel marking when anchor alarm is set
- Better track handling (including distance and time calculation)
- Numerous improvements to ENC chart scaling and rendering
- Better support for Windows 7 (64 bit)
- Linux version update

PolarCOM
- Added default dial panel for initial installation
- New ports with “autostart” option start immediately once added
- Analog BTN dial
- Light up currently selected alarm icons in alarm panel
- Improvements to NMEA parsing and calculation of wind, depth, XTE
- Better handling of serial port data

Linux Version Support

It’s been a while, and now our Linux products are up to date and synchronized with Mac and Windows releases. We hope you find this new version useful and, as always, welcome questions and feedback.

As an open system, Linux comes in variety of distributions, aimed at different audiences and providing diverse functionality. From desktop to servers and embedded devices – there is a Linux out there to fit the need. This wide diversity brings with it distinct issues that are specific to each Linux distribution, makes troubleshooting and issue resolution more difficult.

Bear this in mind when using our Linux products. Download, install and try them. Make sure they work well on your preferred brand of Linux. If they do not – feel free to contact us, but remember that issues not specific to Polar Navy products may be difficult to resolve.

Having said that – we are glad you are here, and will do our best to make Linux users feel welcome.

Mac PowerPC Support

By “popular demand” we now provide Mac version of PolarView and PolarCOM as a universal binary supporting both Intel based systems as well as PowerPC (G4).

PowerPC based Mac systems are now becoming somewhat dated and may not support some of the optimizations available on Intel machines. Please set your expectations of our product performance accordingly.

Please note, that support for PowerPC based systems is limited. We provide this version on the “best effort” basis. If you encounter any issues while using PowerPC version of our products – feel free to contact us, but remember that platform specific issues may be difficult to resolve.

PolarView 1.1/PolarCOM 1.1/PolarIS 1.1

PolarView
- Tides & Currents (graphic/text display, TCD constituents database)
- GRIB wave direction display
- Improvements to ENC chart display and scaling, incorporating some user feedback.

PolarCOM/PolarIS – release to sync up version number with PolarView.

“I launch PolarCOM and nothing happens!”

I get this question a lot from users, so here is the rundown on our products and what is happening here:

PolarCOM is not the entire product, rather it is a GPS instrumentation and NMEA communication application. To get chart/live GPS/ship view you need both PolarCOM and PolarView, as well as “Core Navigation License” – all together they comprise real time navigation application (known as PolarIS).

PolarView is an ENC/RNC chart viewer and planner. It also includes a free GRIB viewer and a download service which gets GRIB data from our servers, as well as tides/currents visualization. If all you need is to manage routes and waypoints, view charts, check tides or weather information – you want to download PolarView.

PolarCOM is a “kind of” a service. As such, when you run it – it starts in system tray (on Windows)  where you should see a small “blue globe” icon. On Mac it will be activated in launcher. You can reach PolarCOM options by right-clicking (or cmd-clicking) on the icon in system tray or launcher respectively. The suggested use is to launch PolarCOM once and just keep it there, in tray, for as long as computer is up. The chart/ship viewer can be started and shut down as convenient, to save power, increase battery life and free up CPU and screen for other things.

If user exits chart viewer, PolarCOM will keep currently navigated route and all the related information. When user launches PolarView again, this information will be restored and the navigated route will become visible again.

PolarView/PolarCOM Update

This is an intermediate maintenance release that fixes a few issues in version 1.0 of the product.

PolarView: show bearing/distance information when moving waypoint used in route.

PolarCOM: solves a number of serial port connectivity issues – if you had a problem making your GPS work with PolarCOM, this update should resolve it (or so I hope).

PolarIS Installation

A few of our users asked about PolarIS installation process, so here is the rundown:

1. Download and install our free chart/GRIB viewer PolarView for your OS from here: http://www.polarnavy.com/main/download. Add charts, download GRIB weather, go ahead – use it
2. Download and install our free NMEA bridge/instrument display PolarCOM for your OS from here: http://www.polarnavy.com/main/download. Add a serial port for your GPS receiver, set up a few dials (Position/SOG/COG are the most handy).
3. Finally – order “Core Navigation License” (follow “ORDER NOW” link on PolarIS page) and add it to PolarView. You will need your PolarView serial number for the order. Open “About” dialog and copy the serial number – as seen in image below.

Once your order is processed, you will receive an E-mail with a new license code to apply to your product.

Please note, that PolarIS license is tied to the serial number you provide, which is unique for each computer system you have installed PolarView on. You will need a separate license for each computer you expect to use PolarIS on. If you have to completely reimage the system or move the PolarIS installation to a new computer, contact us for a replacement license code.

Apply the license code in the license dialog as shown in the image below:

At this point you will need to restart PolarView to activate the license.

A new “Ship Comm” menu will be available to connect to GPS/NMEA data and use it to show a “live ship” on the chart.

We hope you like it