MarineOS at your helm.
MarineOS Helm turns a Raspberry Pi 5 and a PiCAN-M on your boat's NMEA 2000 network into a chartplotter and instrument display: charts on board, your engines and tanks, AIS and alarms, and your autopilot, with no signal needed. Pair it with MarineOS Cloud and it's on your phone too, gets your routes from home and keeps itself up to date.
Plan the route. Let the pilot steer it.
MarineOS sends the leg you're on to your autopilot, so it follows your route, a Go To or an Auto Guidance path, and the autopilot bar on the chart puts Standby, Auto and Track a tap away, with course changes of one and ten degrees.
- Steers to the route: NMEA 2000 (129283–129285) and NMEA 0183 (APB, RMB, XTE)
- Standby, Auto, Track and Wind, and −10 −1 +1 +10, from the chart
- Raymarine Evolution on NMEA 2000, and Signal K pilots (control in beta)
Autopilot control is in beta: try it in open water first. Garmin Reactor pilots can follow the route, but can't be controlled from MarineOS.
Radar on its own screen, or over the chart.
Range rings and bearings, gain, sea and rain, echo trails, a guard zone with an alarm, and the picture laid over the chart so the returns line up with the shore. Shown here with MarineOS's radar simulator: support for Garmin, Furuno, Raymarine and Navico scanners is on the way.
Build your helm your way.
MarineOS is the software. Choose compatible off-the-shelf hardware that fits your boat, starting with Raspberry Pi 5, PiCAN-M and the touchscreen of your choice: a few hundred dollars of parts from any supplier, and easy to replace. Everything plugs together, with no soldering, and the image sets up the PiCAN-M for you.
Raspberry Pi 5
The computer. 4 GB of memory or more, with the official 27 W power supply for setting up on the bench.
PiCAN-M
A HAT for the Pi from Copperhill Technologies: an NMEA 2000 Micro-C connector and NMEA 0183 (RS-422) terminals. Its optional 12 V power supply runs the Pi from the boat.
A touch screen
The Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2, or any HDMI screen with USB touch. At an open helm, choose a bright, sunlight-readable one.
A microSD card
32 GB or more, A2 class, for MarineOS, your charts and the boat's history.
An NMEA 2000 drop cable
From the PiCAN-M to a free T on your boat's backbone (Micro-C). The backbone needs its own 12 V and both terminators.
Somewhere dry
The Pi and the HAT aren't waterproof: mount them in the console or at the nav station, or in a sealed enclosure.
Your position, depth, wind, engines and AIS come from what's already on your NMEA 2000 network, or NMEA 0183 wired to the PiCAN-M's terminals.
Step by step: how to build a Raspberry Pi chartplotter, and NMEA 2000 on a Raspberry Pi with a PiCAN-M.
One SD card image.
Raspberry Pi OS with MarineOS, set up to start full-screen when the Pi powers on, with the PiCAN-M's NMEA 2000 and NMEA 0183 ready. After that it updates itself: no re-flashing.
MarineOS for Raspberry Pi 5
Version 1.0.3 · Oct 2, 2026SHA-256: 8dcd5cad48af6615038852b22b88a1f9c522be45da776b338dc988fdb2a52e9f
A .img.xz file: Raspberry Pi Imager writes it to the card as it is.
From the box to the chart.
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Write the card
In Raspberry Pi Imager, choose Raspberry Pi 5, then Use custom and the image, then your microSD card. When Imager offers OS customisation, set a username and password, your Wi-Fi and time zone: the image has no default password.
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Connect it
Fit the PiCAN-M to the Pi and the screen, then the drop cable to your NMEA 2000 backbone. Put the card in and power up. The first start takes a minute or two longer; then MarineOS fills the screen.
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Tell it about your boat
In Settings › Data Sources, check that NMEA 2000 (can0) sees your instruments. Set your draft and height in Settings › Boat (Auto Guidance plans with them), and download charts for where you boat in Settings › Charts & Tides. On Wi-Fi? Join it in Settings › Network.
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Pair it with MarineOS Cloud
In Settings › System & About › MarineOS Cloud, choose Pair this boat; the display shows a code. Enter it at marineos.cloud/pair (with a free account): that's how it's activated. With Plus, your boat's on your phone and in your browser too, routes you plan at home come aboard, and new versions arrive by themselves.
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Activate it
Everything's on for the first 30 days. Buy a Helm license for the boat in Plan and licenses: the paired helm picks it up by itself and checks it on board from then on, with no signal needed. Without one, after the trial (never during a trip), the helm starts in Safety Mode: enough to get home, not the full helm.
MarineOS is not certified navigation equipment: keep a proper watch and keep official charts on board. Questions about your boat? See Support.