O-charts USB Key Dongle

The dongle is just a USB key for the charts, it is not a USB memory. There are no charts or other information on it but the license key and you can not save anything onto it.

This device is a special piece of hardware, you can not use your own USB dongle.

The dongle supports oeSENC and oeRNC charts. It does not support S63 charts.

Scenarios recommending the use of the USB Key Dongle:

• Creating portable chart sets on various systems for use at different moments as planning, underway, presenting to friends, charter…
• For systems to experiment with, modifying hardware or Operating System.
• Computers that might need to re-install the OS or system images. OpenPlotter and Raspberry Pi are clear candidates.
• Windows 10 systems suffering from "loss of identity" after updates - these are a small one digit percentage of the W10 install, MS will know why. If you have suffered such a case, the dongle is a good permanent solution.
• As an insurance for your chart sets in case the computer dies. Just do not loose the dongle now…

If your chart set allows two installations, you can assign a chart set to either:

• Two computers or two Androids (2 system keys).
• To one computer/Android plus one dongle (1 system key + 1 dongle key).
• To two dongles (2 dongle keys).

How does the USB Key Dongle work?

• Plug the dongle in before starting OpenCPN.
• Request charts for a dongle. This is then one installation of the total allowed for each chart set. If there is still one free slot or system for a chart set, you can assign it to the dongle.
• When you connect to your o-charts account online from OpenCPN and you have the dongle plugged into the computer, the dongle will have preference over any previous system assigned to the computer (system key).
• On one computer, charts requested for a dongle (dongle key) and charts requested only for this computer (system key) can exist at the same time. "Dual personality" one might call this. The charts for the dongle will only be usable with the dongle plugged in.
• Install the charts on as many physical computers as you like and use always one at a time.
• When you remove the dongle and restart OpenCPN you have a standard system as in a classical environment.
• You can take your dongle and some chart set created for it, go to a friend, copy the chart set on his computer, plug the dongle in and show the charts there. Do not forget to take the dongle with you again at the end, delete the charts and run “Force chart database rebuild” on OpenCPN to delete the entries of the chart sets. Else you will see still the outlines.

No dongles for Android.