Cutting and joining radar cable

RRa
dunedin said:
Well Raymarine etc who supply the equipment don't seem to agree with you, otherwise they wouldn't supply wifi connected radars.
Wifi these days has high bandwidth and reliability.
Works fine for many in practice.
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Raymarine supplying such gear doesn't contradict what I wrote. They don't always (to say the least) give us optimum solutions.

WiFi, yes, is great, and I never said it doesn’t work, but is not optimum in this application, for the reasons stated.

You can't judge it even from videoconferencing over wifi. Because there is a certain amount of buffering in videoconferencing.
 
PaulRainbow said:
Why do they still have cable options then ?

Many isn't all, is it ?
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You clearly have an issue with WiFi for some reason. Technically it is more robust than the GPS signal, and GPS is more mission critical than radar for most people (many don’t even fit radar)
Lots of people rely on WiFi for a second plotter screen also.
Huge number of perfectly reliable wireless devices these days. No reason why radar is different - the bandwidth needed is tiny in modern terms.
 
dunedin said:
You clearly have an issue with WiFi for some reason. Technically it is more robust than the GPS signal, and GPS is more mission critical than radar for most people (many don’t even fit radar)
Lots of people rely on WiFi for a second plotter screen also.
Huge number of perfectly reliable wireless devices these days. No reason why radar is different - the bandwidth needed is tiny in modern terms.
Click to expand...
You clearly have an issue with the fact that Raymarine wireless radar doesn't work properly for everyone.

You have one boat, with one radar, that's not a very big sample rate. I work on hundreds of boats in a year, i see more faults than you'll hopefully never see in 2 life times, but they do still happen.
 
dunedin said:
You clearly have an issue with WiFi for some reason. Technically it is more robust than the GPS signal, and GPS is more mission critical than radar for most people (many don’t even fit radar)
Lots of people rely on WiFi for a second plotter screen also.
Huge number of perfectly reliable wireless devices these days. No reason why radar is different - the bandwidth needed is tiny in modern terms.
Click to expand...
You are not correct here. Bandwidth is not the issue. There is indeed a reason why radar is different from those other applications. Radar, like industrial automation, control systems, etc., and unlike IP video and other Internet applications, requires a "deterministic" data stream which can't be substantially buffered. It is exquisitely sensitive to jitter and latency. More than a couple of milliseconds of latency severely disrupts radar.

That's why WiFi is great for normal Internet use, even videoconferencing, but suboptimal for radar, even if it mostly kind of works kind of OK.
 
ChatGPT is not always right, but nails it here:

Limitations of Wi-Fi for radar​


  • Latency and jitter:
    • Wi-Fi has variable delay due to channel contention, interference, retries.
    • For radar, even 200–300 ms lag is noticeable.
  • Reliability:
    • RF interference on boats (microwave ovens, other 2.4 GHz devices, even some LED lights) can cause dropouts.
    • Bandwidth:
      Security / robustness:

      Modern radars generate a lot of data (megabits per second).
    • Wi-Fi can handle this, but only under good signal conditions.
    • A wired Ethernet link is isolated and deterministic.
    • Wi-Fi is inherently less controlled.
Because of these issues, most vendors still recommend hardwired Ethernet as the primary connection, with Wi-Fi more as a convenience (for iPad repeater apps, secondary displays, or low-power compact radars).

Summary
  • Yes: Radar over Wi-Fi is real (Raymarine Quantum, Furuno DRS4W).
  • But: It’s less reliable and has higher latency → not ideal for primary navigation, especially in collision-avoidance situations.
  • For serious offshore use, manufacturers still emphasize wired Ethernet connections.
 
I'm nearly done with this installation. This may be my final question...


For the power supply to the radome, obviously I will have a fuse, but should I be disconnecting it when not in use? Does it have any power consumption when the MFD is off?
 
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