Continuing vYacht WiFi router problems

dinwood said:
How I got into this mess was to follow vYachts instructions (using its embedded Luci) to "join" a wifi hotspot. Since then the vYacht's signal is only visible when this hotspot is powered up.
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Can you clarify this a little? Reconfiguring the vYacht to be a station on the mifi device's network rather than an access point is going to mean the thing is not visible if the mifi device is switched off which I would imagine would be the same for most devices that allowed you to configure them for station mode. But I may have misinterpreted....
 
This isn't really my area of expertise either :-) However a little googling suggests that it seems to be a feature of OpenWRT (on which the vYacht is based) that when configured in dual AP/station mode and the AP which you're associated to as a station (in your case your mifi) is unavailable, the access point created by OpenWRT (in your case the vYacht) is disabled. Here's a link discussing manual configuration and one way to get around that:https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/ap_sta
I'm presuming though you don't want to muck about with the command line, I'm not familiar with "Luci" and 5 minutes of googling hasn't turned up a mechanism to do this with the GUI.

On the plus side...if I'm correct this isn't so much a fault as a limitation and it's not necessarily the case that other products will be able to do the dual AP/STA mode thing at all with a single radio (even with the mifi thingy on).

If you mail vyacht, ask whether the vYacht AP being unavailable when configured in dual AP/Station mode and the remote access point is unavailable is the OpenWRT issue mentioned in the link above and whether there's a GUI mechanism to resolve it, you might be more successful in getting a response: It's a defined question with no "debugging" required.
 
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dinwood said:
To be honest I'm out of my depth here. I followed the instructions at https://www.vyacht.net/howto-connect-to-a-hotspot.html and it appeared to work as expected, until I turned the mifi device off and the vYachtwifi signal disappeared. I'm nervous to "remove" the tp link mifi in case I then lose all access to the vYacht. It currently looks like this in Luci:
View attachment 70810
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You misunderstood what you needed to do to get the data on your phone, you just needed to connect to the vYacht via wifi from your phone. I think you need to delete the tp link client.
 
Thanks for the input everyone - much appreciated.
Paul; I was trying to ensure I could look at the NMEA data as well as the internet. As installed your phone can only see vYachtwifi and his instructions on how to join a hotspot allow both - but, as I found out, it kills the vYachtwifi when the hotspot is off.
laika; thanks, I got all excited for a while as there is a facility in LUCI to run instructions during the boot process exactly as described in openwrt. Trouble is I pasted those instructions into the Startup section within LUCI and it didn't help. It didn't kill everything either, so I guess that's good.
So, do I follow Paul's suggestion of deleting the tp_link client, or does that risk losing all contact with the vYacht?
 
dinwood said:
So, do I follow Paul's suggestion of deleting the tp_link client, or does that risk losing all contact with the vYacht?
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I believe it means that you'll lose connectivity to the Interweb when connected to the vYacht access point. You'll get your boat data but then you'll need to change the network to the tp link in order to get the weather forecast and watch cat videos.
 
dinwood said:
Thanks for the input everyone - much appreciated.
Paul; I was trying to ensure I could look at the NMEA data as well as the internet. As installed your phone can only see vYachtwifi and his instructions on how to join a hotspot allow both - but, as I found out, it kills the vYachtwifi when the hotspot is off.
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You succeeded :encouragement: But, you can't have it both ways, you have it how it is, or you have it how i said, just connected to the vYacht for data.I have mine set to the latter, on the premise that i won't want to use the internet while i'm navigating.

So, do I follow Paul's suggestion of deleting the tp_link client, or does that risk losing all contact with the vYacht?
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Providing you leave the vYacht master, you can still connect to it.

Try disabling the tp link client, rather than deleting it, that should give you the option to toggle between both systems.
 
laika said:
I believe it means that you'll lose connectivity to the Interweb when connected to the vYacht access point. You'll get your boat data but then you'll need to change the network to the tp link in order to get the weather forecast and watch cat videos.
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You're right :encouragement:
 
Thanks Guys, by hitting "disable network" I can indeed get back to seeing the vYacht without the mifi being on. Trouble is it doesn't seem to be transmitting any data when connected this way. Bloody thing...
 
I would not recommend this device to anybody. Trying to get a response from the vendor is impossible. Support is totally non-existent.

I recently spent a couple of weeks testing it out and discovered that the conversion from SeatalkNG to NMEA 0183 is seriously broken. Several values were just plain WRONG - for example STW and some other really basic items. I have decided that the device is so defective that it's not worth trying to use and am going to throw it away.

Naturally, I have received no reply to my queries or concerns from the vendor.

Please take my experience as a warning and STAY AWAY FROM VYACHT. It just plain doesn't work. Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like any further details.
 
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