Mimic Display Software for dredging
DREDGE 4 is a MIMIC display program for Dredgers equipped with angle transducers at the joints between the jib, stick and bucket of the dredging arms. Using DREDGE 4 you can see what is going on beneath the surface so you can work in turbid water day or night. It can be configured as a simple system using the known water depth as a guide or it can use survey quality GPS to measure the altitude of the dredger relative to the local earth ellipsoid datum. Also it can use tidal data relative to the UT time of High Water at the nearest Standard Port to calibrate the depth of water when dredging in tidal areas. In addition it can accept data from a depth sounder if one is available on a floating dredger.
Dredge 4 can use polled angle sensors using RS485 HEX or BCD connections making multidrop input possible.
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Based on the Nessie dredger software developed by ESL
for a specific dredging project, DREDGE 4 is more general and can be configured
in many ways to suit the particular dredger involved and your mode of
operation.
The software "Dredge 4" uses a DDE link to obtain data from NMEAPro, this being received in the form of a proprietary composite sentence similar to that used by Portable Navigator. From the data received the jib and cutter arm angles, the height above Ellipsoid datum, the position and various other information is extracted and used with dimensional constants to calculate the depth to dredge.
The data is logged to a comma delimited text file along with date, time, and position etc. The logging process uses the format parser technology from Portable Navigator. The result is that Portable Navigator can be used off-line or while dredging to read and display the log file, or to simultaneously keep its own log file with a different format.
Keeping the log file is fully automatic, a new log being started automatically each day. Also if a second session is started and a log for that day already exists then the data is appended to that file. The format of the log i.e. which fields are stored can be controlled by editing the parser string in the "dredge3.ini" file. The log file. being a comma delimited text file, can easily be imported into other applications e.g. a spread sheet program, for further analysis. Also Portable Navigator can be used to produce coloured contour plots if using a depth sounder.
The Demo version of the program is available to download free from the ESL shop. It enables you to playback the NMEA Input Log file provided and has all the options and controls of the full product. However it includes an unregistered copy of NMEApro which cannot receive actual COM port input data. To obtain full functionality you need to download, buy and register the full version of Dredge 4.