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For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. This page is also available as Markdown.

Overview

CeruleanMap is used in conjunction with the CeruleanTracker application. It needs to run on the same network as the PC running CeruleanTracker, or on the same PC as CeruleanTracker. It is not intended to be an ROV operator’s main user interface.

Main Window

Generally, the map app shows the position of the ROV, and also the location of the Topside GPS connected to CeruleanTracker, if there is one.

The map can also be decorated with known points and regions of interest.

When the CeruleanMap App launches, a control panel is shown on the display (see below). This is where the map is configured if you want it to run differently than the default. To put the panel away, de-select the “Show This Control Panel” checkbox, circled in, red. It will close and move the checkbox to the menu bar (see second figure, below, circled in red.

The control panel has options to turn various types of map decorations on and off. It also has an option to toggle lat/long displays between DD format and DDM format. There is an option to cache satellite imagery as well (see the section on satellite imagery below).

The Map Display

The map below is showing part of Wayzata Bay of Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota.

The map can be zoomed in and out with the mouse scroll wheel and can be dragged with the mouse to keep the area of interest in the display.

Note: the map will always keep the ROV position in view on the map, when the ROV position is updating, unless you turn this behavior off on control panel. You can also manually send the map to the ROV position using the “Goto” menu.

Example Map showing a sortie. The “arrow” icon is the ROV position. If a DVL is present and active: the icon is arrow-shaped; and it is red when the DVL has a bottom lock and yellow if not. If not DVL is present and active the ROV icon is diamond shaped.

The Map Display, Tracking DUAL ROV Locators

When connected to an ROV Locator Receiver set to track two ROVL transmitters, the CeruleanMap display will show a second ROV icon. The main ROV icon is a diamond shape and will be either red or yellow depending on which output you have selected in CeruleanTracker. The secondary icon is a violet square.

A few notes:

  • You can switch which ROV is primary or secondary in CeruleanTracker. Note that when you do this, it will greatly confuse any filtering done on the primary ROV position.

  • The secondary icon position is never filtered by CeruleanTracker.

Example Map showing dual ROVL transmitter position. A buoy with a transmitter was dropped at point (A). It drifted to point (B), and the current position is the violet square icon. The ROV was launched near point (C) and was driven to point (E) along the yellow trail. The primary ROV (E) is attached to Blue ROV. Meanwhile, the Topside GPS (green circle and trail) attached to the boat drifted to point (D).

Edit Menu

The Edit menu has options to Erase the ROV trail. It can also clear any waypoints saved since the Console Application was started. This menu also has an option to copy the map window to the clipboard. Right-clicking the mouse in the map window also copies the map to the clipboard.

Waypoint Menu

The Waypoint menu is used to add waypoints at the boat position or the ROV position. Waypoints can be saved to a file at any time. The file format is compatible with the map decoration file. Waypoints are named by date and time, but you can edit the names in the waypoint file after saving them. If you don’t save waypoints they are lost each time the program exits.

Map Decoration File

The map decoration file is assumed to be named “Known Points.txt” and is assumed to be on your desktop. The file can contain points of interest which are optionally plotted on the map with their names. The file can also contain polygons. Open polygons are displayed as piecewise line segments. These can be used as planned routed, boundaries, etc. Closed polygons are displayed as filled regions. They can be used to represent land, areas of interest, etc. Both Open and closed polygons are put into one of four color groups, which plot in that color. Each color group can be turned on and off separately.

The map decoration file is an ordinary text file.

Map Decoration File Format

The maps shown in this manual were decorated using the following file. Note some of the polygons show line wrapping so they can be seen on these pages, but you do not put line breaks in the file.

A polygon definition consists of the word “POLYGON”, a comma, a color group name (“BLACK”, “WHITE”, “BLUE”, “ORANGE”), a comma, and then pairs of comma-separated lat/long coordinates in DD format, with a comma following each pair except the last. For a closed polygon, the final coordinate pair needs to be exactly the same as the first coordinate pair.

Map Display -- DVL Dead Reckoning Test over 1500 Meter Course

The images on the next page are map displays of two DVL sorties of about 1500 meters. The total accumulated error is about 1.6% and 2.1% of total distance traveled. These images were not cherry-picked, but you should not expect to always achieve that accuracy.

The red trace is DVL dead reckoning with the sensor head mounted on a sting on the Cerulean RV Helter Skelter (see photos below). The green trace is ground truth from a GPS sitting about 1 meter away from the sting.

The course was over muck bottom with water ranging from 2 meters to 17 meters deep. There was submerged vegetation for about 25% of the course.

The sensor head mounted on a sting
The sting deployed in operating position
About 1500 meters traveling counter-clockwise
About 1400 meters traveling clockwise

Satellite Imagery

When operating in littoral areas the DVL Map window can load and display satellite images, either loaded on-the-fly from the internet (if you have internet access) or satellite image data cached ahead of time. It can do the same when you are in the deep ocean, but the images are, well, the ocean, so not that useful. Images are loaded from Google using Cerulean’s Google map API key. Google does not serve images at any useful level of detail for many parts of the ocean.

Radio buttons on the map control panel select the type of imagery to use. This defaults to “none.”

If desired, images are cached in a folder on your desktop called “DVLMapImageCache.” Each tile uses roughly 500 KB of disk space. Controls on the map control panel allow you to select the number of tiles horizontally and vertically, and the zoom level (resolution) for each cache operation. Multiple areas can be cached, and multiple levels of zoom (resolution) are also possible. Cached images are drawn first, and any known points or polygons will plot on top of the image.

The following screen snips illustrate the key aspects of the imagery feature.

This snip shows a basic view of part of Wayzata Bay in Minnesota with no imagery selected.
This snip shows the previous viewpoint with on-the-fly satellite imagery.
This snip is the previous location, zoomed out showing on-the-fly satellite imagery. The yellow square shows the approximate location of what will be cached if you select Cache at Current View in the Control Panel.
This snip is the previous viewpoint but using cached imagery. Note the actual cached area is slightly smaller than the cache bounding box, to hide the Google watermark at the bottom of each tile.
This snip is the previous viewpoint but zoomed in on the cached imagery.
This is a zoomed-out on-the-fly image of Long Beach Harbor near Los Angeles.
This snip shows multiple cached areas from the previous snip in one view. The cached areas can be overlapping or separated. Multiple areas can be cached and multiple caches from anywhere on earth can co-exist side by side. As cached areas come into view they will be automatically displayed if “Use Cache” is selected, and you can zoom in as far as you can with on-the-fly imagery.
This snip shows cached images of different zoom levels overlaid. The center of the snip has a higher-number zoom than the outer edge. This is most apparent looking at the roads. Inside the center, the roads are sharp. Outside the center they are blurrier.
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