OpenCPN is a marine chartplotter and navigation application designed for use aboard a boat as well as for planning voyages ashore. It combines electronic charts with live positioning information so a vessel’s location, course and planned route can be viewed together.
The application supports raster and vector nautical charts and can receive information from GPS, AIS and other marine equipment. Route, track and waypoint management are integrated into the main application, while a plugin system extends OpenCPN into areas such as weather routing, radar integration and specialist navigation tools.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Displays BSB raster charts together with S57 and supported encrypted S63 vector charts.
- Supports MBTiles chart sets and geographical overlays.
- Receives GPS and GNSS position data and provides a moving-map display of the vessel’s location.
- Integrated route, track and waypoint database with GPX import and export.
- Route planning includes support for great-circle routes and tidal information.
- Can send active-route navigation information to a connected autopilot.
- Decodes AIS data and displays nearby vessel targets on the chart.
- AIS safety monitoring provides configurable warnings for potentially dangerous targets.
- Displays tide and tidal-current predictions directly in the chart interface.
- Reads GRIB weather data for displaying forecast conditions.
- Includes anchor-watch and man-overboard facilities.
- Supports NMEA data and Signal K networking for integration with marine electronics.
- Offers single-chart, quilted and split-screen viewing together with several chart orientation modes.
- A broad plugin ecosystem adds weather routing, radar, tactical, annotation and other specialist capabilities.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: opencpn.org
Support:
Developer: The OpenCPN Authors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
OpenCPN is written in C and C++. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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