On board WIFI

[Paul Sheridan]

Hello all, my first post as a new boat owner ....... (me, not the boat!)
I would like to fit a wifi system into our boat which is a Sealine 380. Can anyone recommend a system that they have installed or have experience with?
Any help on this topic would be appreciated.

Many thanks
Paul.

 

[harvey38]

Depends if you want an all singing all dancing 'Out at sea' wifi or happy to use in port/marina only. I use a router bought from Amazon for about £80 and £10 a month sim card from Smarty that has a huge amount of data I get nowhere near using. I use it for streaming to the TV, music and updating the raymarine MFDs.

 

[Hurricane]

Depends if you want an all singing all dancing 'Out at sea' wifi or happy to use in port/marina only. I use a router bought from Amazon for about £80 and £10 a month sim card from Smarty that has a huge amount of data I get nowhere near using. I use it for streaming to the TV, music and updating the raymarine MFDs.

Yep - definitely.
And don't buy a dedicated marine system.
They are usually way out of date and far more expensive that a domestic system.
For years, I used one of these:-
D-Link DWR-921 4G 3G LTE SIM UNLOCKED Wireless Mobile Broadband Router Used 790069393532 | eBay
Which worked well
These days I use one of these which is supposed to be more rugged.
Teltonika RUT950 4G LTE WLAN Router
But I think the technology of the RUT950 is a bit outdated.
Initially, I didn't like it but the RUT950 has been working 24/7 for the last 6 months without any issues.
I use a local Spanish SIM but in the UK most contracts will do.
It might be a good idea to find a 5G router but, at the moment, they are a bit expensive.
4G is usually adequate.

Once you have a working device on the boat, it will work just like a home system.
For example, I have security cameras all over the boat.
Here is a photo taken from our flybridge camera a few seconds ago:-



But all your usual domestic devices will work of course.
Alexa, mobile phones, music devices, TV etc.

 

[Paul Sheridan]

Thanks for the replies, we need to keep eyes on the safety cameras installed in mother in laws house (who has dementia). When in port it is not a problem as we can use our phones, but am worried about not having signal in some of the places we intend to more in over night.

 

[Commercial Dave]

Teltonika RUT240 with a big external 4G aerial mounted as high as possible, and a SIM card from your chosen provider with as much data as you need

 

[Martxer]

No experience of using it but starlink have a system for camper vans, I don’t think it’s cheap

 

[Iorrus]

I have a Teltonika RUTX14 which has a CAT12 modem, I use it to connect to marina Wi-Fi and fall back on Mobile SIM card. I simply connect to the access point WiFi it creates, I bought it originally as I fancied housing it in a nice antenna housing outside called a QuSpot next to the VHF antennas etc. But I decided against this as it needed an extra hole drilled in the fibreglass, so it just sits inside.

For this use case a MoFi MOFI5500-5GXeLTE-EM7690 from the states is probably better as it’s got a higher spec CAT20 modem. But I’ve no complaints so far.

In reality the gain over a good modern phone in hotspot mode is probably marginal as it will have state of the art WiFi and mobile modem, (although antenna is obviously smaller)


rvmobileinternet.com is a good site for reviews etc.

 

[Commercial Dave]

No experience of using it but starlink have a system for camper vans, I don’t think it’s cheap

Starlink Maritime is $10000 for the terminals and $5000 per month for the subscription

 

[Martxer]

Starlink Maritime is $10000 for the terminals and $5000 per month for the subscription

Wow that is expensive.
The star link for rv’s is £529 for the hardware and £114 for the subscription that can be paused or unpaused as needed.

 

[Peterlewis321]

We bought a Glomex Webboat 4G unit about 4 years ago-bit of a rip off really in hindsight but seemed a good idea at the time. Inside the little dome it has/had a Teltonika RUT950 and a reasonable set of aerials. I flashed the unit to get rid of the (awful) Glomex software and must say the RUT950 was pretty good for 4 years. However a couple of months ago it just died, so I purchased a RUTX14 and it is way way faster-am getting 60Mbps+ now when connected to 4G. Plus it has 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wifi whereas the old RUT950 only had 2.4Ghz. All in all it has made quite a difference particularly when multiple devices are connected and trying to stream tv etc.
Our boat is in Spain and we only use mobile data as the marina wifis tend to be utter garbage. Almost always have had decent signal when cruising along the coast of Spain, the balearics and probably as far as 10+ miles offshore.
Sky mobile works really well for us as the sim card provider and, despite them now charging £2 per day roaming, we think it is still a good deal as you can then use unlimited data from your available allowance. We have 4 sim cards with Sky in the family and this means any unused data gets ‘banked’ every month which can then be applied to any of the 4 sim cards anywhere anytime. Despite best efforts we always seem to have atleast c400gigs of available data in our piggy bank! And because the sim card is a UK one it means we can watch iPlayer, etc etc without needing a VPN.

 

[MapisM]

These days I use one of these which is supposed to be more rugged.
Teltonika RUT950 4G LTE WLAN Router
But I think the technology of the RUT950 is a bit outdated.
Initially, I didn't like it but the RUT950 has been working 24/7 for the last 6 months without any issues.

Same here! I've got a 955, but it's essentially the same thing.
A no frills but very solid and reliable device, if a bit expensive considering that it lacks even the carrier aggregation, now available in much cheaper devices.
But what I consider the killer feature for onboard usage is the fact that it takes anywhere from 9 to 30V DC, which means that it can be powered straight from the domestic bank.

As a slight thread drift, did you try the remote monitoring functionality of the thing?
If yes, and if it works well, I'd be interested in some indications on how to configure it for that.
Thanks in advance!

PS: any plans to come back to CF in the near future, by chance?
Goes without saying that you'd be always more than welcome!

 

[Hurricane]

We bought a Glomex Webboat 4G unit about 4 years ago-bit of a rip off really in hindsight but seemed a good idea at the time. Inside the little dome it has/had a Teltonika RUT950 and a reasonable set of aerials. I flashed the unit to get rid of the (awful) Glomex software and must say the RUT950 was pretty good for 4 years. However a couple of months ago it just died, so I purchased a RUTX14 and it is way way faster-am getting 60Mbps+ now when connected to 4G. Plus it has 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wifi whereas the old RUT950 only had 2.4Ghz. All in all it has made quite a difference particularly when multiple devices are connected and trying to stream tv etc.
Our boat is in Spain and we only use mobile data as the marina wifis tend to be utter garbage. Almost always have had decent signal when cruising along the coast of Spain, the balearics and probably as far as 10+ miles offshore.
Sky mobile works really well for us as the sim card provider and, despite them now charging £2 per day roaming, we think it is still a good deal as you can then use unlimited data from your available allowance. We have 4 sim cards with Sky in the family and this means any unused data gets ‘banked’ every month which can then be applied to any of the 4 sim cards anywhere anytime. Despite best efforts we always seem to have atleast c400gigs of available data in our piggy bank! And because the sim card is a UK one it means we can watch iPlayer, etc etc without needing a VPN.

I think I have the answer for 4G coverage in Spain.
Dirt cheap and dead easy.
Have a look at www.lobster.es
Essentially it is a PAYGO system so you don't need a Spanish NIE number or a Spanish Bank account.
Full mobile phone/4G/5G contracts in Spain do require that you have an NIE number and, I believe a Spanish Bank account.
As far as we are concerned, there are two big pluses for www.lobster.es
One is that you can simply add "lumps" of data as you need them - I run my system 24/7 and it costs me less than 10 quid a month.
When I get to the boat, I can select how much data I need and if it runs out, I just buy more.
This system is saving me about £300 per year over the old Vodafone UK contract that I previously had. but when the Vodafone data ran out - that was it - no more internet.
The other benefit of www.lobster.es to boaters in Spain is that you can "freeze" your connection when you go home and "unfreeze" it when you return - saving even more.

The big disadvantage of a local service ( www.lobster.es for example) is that it comes with a Spanish IP address so UK TV wont work.
The solution is to use a VPN service - I chose NordVPN - not the cheapest but works with UK TV every time.
NordVPN supply browser addon that makes it simple to use.
Alternatively, I use one of these
Netflix Certified 4K Android google TV Box Youtube Prime Video supported MECOOL KM2 2GB RAM 8GB ROM
Essentially, it is an Android TV box but NordVPN have a module so it becomes a seemless connection to UK TV.
So, The Lobster and the Android TV box work together to provide a neat solution for those of us who treat our boats in the Med as a "home from home".

 

[Hurricane]

Same here! I've got a 955, but it's essentially the same thing.
A no frills but very solid and reliable device, if a bit expensive considering that it lacks even the carrier aggregation, now available in much cheaper devices.
But what I consider the killer feature for onboard usage is the fact that it takes anywhere from 9 to 30V DC, which means that it can be powered straight from the domestic bank.

As a slight thread drift, did you try the remote monitoring functionality of the thing?
If yes, and if it works well, I'd be interested in some indications on how to configure it for that.
Thanks in advance!

PS: any plans to come back to CF in the near future, by chance?
Goes without saying that you'd be always more than welcome!

To be quite honest, P, once I got the RUT 950 working, I just left it alone.
Taking advice from this forum, I downgraded the software to the older version which does seem to be more stable.
I power it all via an Energenie Remote GSM Socket - the idea is that I can remotely reboot the system.
The big downfall with that approach is that I powered it from a PAYGO Vodafone SIM which has been working fine for the last 6 years.
But suddenly it seems to have stopped working - Something to sort out on my next trip - I hate Vodafone!!

We would love to come back to CF but with Covid and other family constraints, we won't be coming this year.
I really would like to come down again though.

 

[st599]

No experience of using it but starlink have a system for camper vans, I don’t think it’s cheap

Need the gyro stabilised version for boats. There's also a geofencing issue with star link. There's loads of irate Canadian users online who've gone over the border for the week and it's stopped working - you only get the territory you live in.

 

[Commercial Dave]

Wow that is expensive.
The star link for rv’s is £529 for the hardware and £114 for the subscription that can be paused or unpaused as needed.

Alas, you cannot use regular Starlink at sea

 

[Andrew M]

Good topic, I'm keen to get something sorted on board for us in Brixham, for general use and for the security cameras. MDL's signal not good or reliable where we are. So I've ordered one of the RUT950 units. We're down on the boat for a long week soon so I can have a play then.
Thanks.

 

[harvey38]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-MR6400-...id=1660663398&sprefix=Wifi+ro,aps,362&sr=8-11

This is the unit we use, very reliable, good signal strength across our 38' mobo and we use one of these for our security camera, built in microphone, can be remotely panned and tilted, emails us alerts of movements and so far, totally reliable .


https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-Se...ef=sr_1_1?keywords=Tapo&qid=1660663666&sr=8-1

 

[Croftie]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-MR6400-Unlocked-Configuration-Required-External/dp/B016ZWXYXG/ref=sr_1_11?crid=1BRVTGF54E3ZQ&keywords=wifi+router&qid=1660663398&sprefix=Wifi+ro,aps,362&sr=8-11

This is the unit we use, very reliable, good signal strength across our 38' mobo and we use one of these for our security camera, built in microphone, can be remotely panned and tilted, emails us alerts of movements and so far, totally reliable .

Exactly the same router I have been using for 2 years with no problem

 

[Greg2]

There was a long discussion on PBO a while back and as a result we got a Teltonika RUT240 with a Smarty SIM card and I mounted it in the void space above the wheelhouse deckhead. Didn’t bother with an additional external aerial and it has been pretty good this season and as cheap as chips!

 

[AndieMac]

Alas, you cannot use regular Starlink at sea

It seems there are plenty of happy boaters using the off the shelf RV Starlink option in the US, according the various forums.
The maritime version seems to be for the big commercial operators and super yachts.

This was just lifted from a US forum…..


We only have our personal experience over the last 3 months and 2,900+ miles from Washington State to Glacier Bay Alaska and back. Except for the area North of Petersburg AK, which was clearly stated on the Starlink Website as not getting service until late this year, or next, we enjoyed superfast internet and streaming video the entire time.

Roku, Hallmark Channel and Prime Video, often when underway in remote areas, or while anchored in obscure anchorages where we listened to wolves howl while we watched streaming video . . .

We fired T-mobile internet, as well as ATnT hotspots, and are going strictly Starlink.
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