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bigbrainlabs edited this page Jul 23, 2026 · 2 revisions

BoatOS Wiki

A complete marine operating system for the Raspberry Pi — offline navigation, official inland charts, AIS, engine monitoring, logbook and weather. No subscriptions, no cloud.

This wiki collects the practical knowledge around BoatOS: what to buy, how to get going, and which traps wait for you along the way. The versioned documentation (installation, updates, configuration) deliberately lives in the repo under docs/ — it belongs to a specific release and is best kept there.

Why the split? The wiki is its own repository with no version tags — it always shows "now". Anything where the exact version matters (which menu, which path) belongs in the repo. Anything that holds across versions (hardware, traps, fundamentals) belongs here.


Getting started

  • Hardware — what works, what doesn't, with prices
  • First Start — from a flashed image to a GPS fix
  • Maps & Charts — offline maps and the official ELWIS charts

When things go wrong


Which version do I have? — The three channels

BoatOS runs in three parallel states. The built-in updater knows two channels (switchable under Settings → System); the development state lives only in Git.

Channel State What's in it
Stable v1.7.3 Offline navigation, inland routing with locks, night (red-light) mode, multi-region maps. This is what the ready-to-flash image ships with.
Beta v1.8.x Adds: official IENC charts (ELWIS), route hazard check, marinas/anchorages/tides, the nav-master instrument.
Dev v1.9 Only in the v1.9.x-dev branch: 3D chart view, real 3D navigation marks, weather overlays. Not in the updater yet.

Switching channels works both ways — the updater always takes the newest version of the selected channel. If you're looking for a feature from this table and can't find it, you're usually one channel too low.


Questions, ideas, exchange

This wiki is open: if you spot a mistake or want to contribute your own knowledge, you can edit pages directly. For larger reworks, please raise it in Discussions first.

Clone this wiki locally