GRIB download fail
Knowing that many people use the freely available OpenCPN charting program on their computers, I once again took a crack at playing with it yesterday. My main focus yesterday was trying to get the program to display GRIB data. While you can see from the images below that I was able to do it, I failed in my attempts to get the program to download the GRIB data directly from Zygrib. Sadly, as a lifelong Mac user, I found the entire process very unintuitive. If you have managed to make it work, perhaps you could share how you did it?
Compare the wind found in the Eastern Caribbean with that found off Chile/Peru.
Mike I’ll be interested in hearing how you resolve this. I’ve had a lot of the same issues and have almost given up on Open CPN.
Deb
SV Kintala
http://www.theretirementproject.blogspot.com
It still seems pretty buggy on the Mac.
Same here, very interested as a Mac user. I was able to get the features to work on our Windows based computer back home before leaving but I didn’t want to cart that particular “anchor” around with us. I’ll be watching to see if anyone has any solutions for Mac users.
From all reports, it seems like the GRIB file download needs to take place outside the OpenCPN app on Mac.
Unfortunately OpenCPN is unable to download GRIB files and so you need to do this separately from the app itself. I usually do so in Zygrib, and download the files to the same directory I put OpenCPN’s charts in. On a Mac, by default Zygrib wants to put the grib files in a .zygrib directory in your Documents directory. Don’t accept the default, as you can’t get OpenCPN to see that in it’s configuration. navigate to another directory and download the files. And, as I said, I find the charts directory an easy place to put the grib files.
I’ve also used the email service/instructions here –
http://weather.mailasail.com/Franks-Weather/Mailasail-Grib-Responder
and by using cURL (NOAA instructions here) –
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/wesley/fast_downloading_grib.html
It would be nice if the Zygrib and OpenCPN people would get together and merge that automatic downloading functionality from right within OpenCPN…
Thanks, Paul.
Not sure if this will help, I downloaded the zyGrib_mac-7.0.0 ( http://www.zygrib.org/getfile.php?file=zyGrib_mac-7.0.0.dmg ) and run this app to download Grib file to my Grib folder in OpenCPN. Then in OpenCPN I pick the new file to view wind.
Right. That’s not exactly what I did to get the screen shots in this post but it was similar.