About Plugins

The core OpenCPN tries to keep features to a minimum so that it is lean, mean and easy to use. Features can still be added through the plugin infrastructure. The plugin interface has changed during the 2.6 beta cycle. The plugins must use PlugIn API version to 1.8 to work with OpenCPN 2.6.1624, and later
A number of new plugins were introduced with the 2.5 release, and the developmen has not slowed down since.

OpenCPN offers two default plugins available preinstalled:

• GRIB Weather Plugin
• Dashboard Plugin

And quite a few plugins on top of that:

Plugins available for download -> downloadplugins

Alll(?) plugins in various stage of development.

• The WMM plugin showing magnetic variation.
• Logbook Konni, an advanced logbook.
• A logbook plugin. The Original logbook plugin
• A Chart downloader/updater plugin
• VDR or Voyage Data Recorder
• Google Earth plugin - Windows only.
• BSB4 plugin -Windows only - Non Free.
• "nv-charts" plugin. Windows only - Non Free.
• Kml overlay plugin.
• Hydrographic survey plugin.
• Radar overlay plugin.

All links above are to forum threads where he respective plugins are discussed.

Download Plugins

Go to the dedicated page for downloading plugins.

Installing a Plugin

For Linux, place the downloaded "pluginxx.so" in {prefix}/lib/opencpn, which means /usr/local/lib/opencpn for a standard installation, using the provided packages.
For Windows place the downloaded "pluginxx.dll" in a "plugins" subfolder of your OpenCPN installation folder. A common location is C:\Program Files\OpenCPN\plugins.
Once the plugin is in the right directory, restart OpenCPN and proceed to enabling the plugin.

Enabling a Plugin

Plugins are made available by clicking on the plugin in the ToolBox Plugin Tab. Once this is done, an "Enable" button appears. Pressing this button activates the plugin icon in the ToolBar. Not all plugins has an icon when active. For most plugins there is a "Preferences" Button for configuration.

  Grib ToolBar Icon
  Dashboard ToolBar Icon