Believe it or not I haven't messed with radar since the military days and really don't have a familiarity with modern systems so I can't judge what's good. If Timed
Transmission means firing off a "pulse" every minute or so then that's easy, if Guard Zone means anything on the "scope" rings an
alarm bell then that wouldn't be hard to do either (allowing that OpenCPN has an
alarm bell to ring). The nature of the BR24 is that it hasn't any warm up time or issues with high voltages or currents and so a wake-up-and-alarm based on a five minute cycle would allow some benefits when spotting ships at sea but might not work for crab pots.
I'm very low on the
commercial radar knowledge curve and so will have to
research the features common on what's out there. For example I noted that the Lowrance HDS units use color differentiation on signal strength while Gradar simply varied the intensity of red. I'm trying out the color rendition scheme and depending on the way it looks will make it an option. If you have an idea then identify where you get it from i.e. a GARMIN, FORUNO,
RAYMARINE, or
SIMRAD and I'll see if I can find a demo unit or
documentation and check it out.
The BR24 seems to be very good at short range definition and from what little time I've used it in the field was able to see posts, buoys and even bulrushes on bars in the San Joaquin while mounted on my
cabin top. I haven't been able to check out use for long range or with real
weather and waves though. Maybe it'll show a squall and maybe it can't deal with five foot chop. It saw individual geese at 50' but might not see a flock of seagulls at a mile. I'm a poor evaluator at this stage.
I'm also not a programmer. I get by and will be dogged at figuring out the algorithms but generally I'm plagiarizing someone else and don't have the intimate knowledge of C++ or any of the other predominant computer languages. I don't write elegant or efficient code. I'm still
learning.
Hasta,
Dave