vYacht NMEA over wi-fi trouble

D

dinwood

Well-Known Member
Joined
11 Feb 2007
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130
Location
European coast
www.inwoods.org
I bought a vYacht router earlier this year, as it seemed a sensible price to pay in order to play with wireless nmea data on the boat. I'd read a few negative comments about the support provided, but I figured that as it was open source I could always have a go myself. So far, big mistake. After a promising start I'm no longer getting any support and the up to date source code is not available online. The manufacturer has stopped responding to emails after the first month or so.

What I wanted to do initially was take the SeaTalk ng output from my Raymarine instruments and display them on an Android phone. Most usefully this would be displaying wind and depth when at anchor when I don't have the chartplotter on (to save power) so can't use Raymarine's app (and I don't want to pay for an extra display below decks). The router sort-of worked, with some data being visible on 3rd party NMEA Android apps and some data on vYacht's own SignalK app. The manufacturer admitted problems with the way his software handles wind sentences and provided a firmware update, which was better in minor respects but overall a step backwards.

Does anyone have any good expereience with vYacht or with the support he provides?
 
dinwood said:
Does anyone have any good expereience with vYacht or with the support he provides?
Click to expand...

Not exactly. I had problems getting N2K AIS to my laptop, as with you he communicated for a start, then ignored me and the problem was never fixed well enough for it to work. It does work OK for basic stuff and will do 0183 AIS.

My impression is that he's in way out of his depth with the coding.
 
I had great support from him but there was a gap of a few weeks while he went cruising. He is Swedish which explains it, they only have about a month of summer so they tend to pack all their summer activities into a short space of time.
 
Installed a vYacht box on a friends boat. It had its ups and downs. The one support request I sent has never seen a response in months. The firmware seemed... unfinished. On the upside, after some fiddling around and creative wiring it eventually did what my friend wanted.

The bit of software on the vYacht that converts the NMEA2000 PNGs into NMEA0183 sentences (a hacked up build of gpsd, if I recall correctly from peeking at the source) did not convert into all the right sentences, but upon additionally wiring a NMEA0183 output from the chartplotter to the vYacht box we picked up those missing sentences that way and got them on the Wifi, which made the iPad apps all work as expected.
 
I'm going to bin mine.

Build quality dreadful.

Then I found it was not picking up nearby boats. Thought it was an aerial problem and spent money on having some test the aerial. It was fine. I reverted to the USB serial converter and it worked again.

Landfill.
 
I bought one and have got it working using nmea0183 from a standard horizon gx2200 vhf / GPS / AIS and ST60+ depth into Open CPN which works very well so far.

Overall impression is that it's a good cheap and cheerful way to get the basic info over wifi. However, I would agree that build quality is not good with reference particularly to the casing (lid sort of just rests in place, no clips!) and especially the wiring connectors which are very small and flimsy. I took the lid off mine and installed the base in a waterproof project box with the aerial mounted externally through the box and st60 display mounted in the front. I will at some stage also install more robust wiring connectors.

I have no experience of support because I haven't needed any, but not much seems to have happened on the website for over a year and as he says, it is more of a hobby.

Conclusion - I only plan to do coastal hops and do not need to rely on it, so it fits my needs. If I did (i.e for offshore or intergalactic travel, or a more complex setup), I would be tempted to look elsewhere.
 
I've a vYacht WiFi. It works more or less OK. It does seem to get overloaded when feeding N2K sentences into it so you lose messages - especially noticeable with AIS messages. I think those using an NMEA0183 input have better experiences.

In terms of support, I suspect it is a one man company and he has a day job, so support is pretty slow. I've also found he was less technical than I'd assumed. But as mentioned above, Swedes tend to take most of their holiday in a single block in the summer. Many much larger companies almost close down for 4 to 6 weeks. I'd be surprised if he's actually deliberately ignoring you.

I also have a ShipModul Miniplexer (without WiFi) and it's a good bit of kit, albeit one that I'd say assumes that the user wants control over the configuration, so you do have to set it up teh way you want it to work.
 
simonfraser said:
Any one know how to reset the unit ?

I messed up first time, send it back to sweden, give him his due, reset and posted back at no charge.

Got it connected to wifi today, later reset the log in password for the modem, all ok.
Now after power off there is no wifi signal from the unit :(
Click to expand...
Is the wifi light on? if so it should be transmitting. Can you see a strange hotspot in your computer wifi settings? ie have you inadvertently changed the hotspot name? Or have you switched off the wifi in the internal settings? Have you got a laptop with a network connection port? If so put a network cable in to it and in to the LAN port on the vyacht. Wait a minute while it allocates an ip address to your laptop then open your browser and type in 192.168.10.1 in to the address bar. The workings should then come up and ypu can check it to see what settings you have put in to it.
Stu
 
Tnx Stu

Took the lid off, antenna connector loose, but no that did not fix it :(

Wifi light is on as b4, but nothing showing on my ipad. Have switched the wifi on / off, no difference.
Too frustrating ......

Have looked at
https://www.prscomms.co.uk/webshop/nmea2000/1310-yacht-devices-ydwg-02.html

Would that connect to my phone hotspot and provide a wifi signal to connect my ipad to ?
Nmea interface ?

Simon
 
Tnx Stu

Took the lid off, antenna connector loose, but no that did not fix it :(

Wifi light is on as b4, but nothing showing on my ipad. Have switched the wifi on / off, no difference.
Too frustrating ......

Have looked at
https://www.prscomms.co.uk/webshop/nmea2000/1310-yacht-devices-ydwg-02.html

Would that connect to my phone hotspot and provide a wifi signal to connect my ipad to ?
Nmea interface ?

Simon
 
simonfraser said:
Tnx Stu

Took the lid off, antenna connector loose, but no that did not fix it :(

Wifi light is on as b4, but nothing showing on my ipad. Have switched the wifi on / off, no difference.
Too frustrating ......

Have looked at
https://www.prscomms.co.uk/webshop/nmea2000/1310-yacht-devices-ydwg-02.html

Would that connect to my phone hotspot and provide a wifi signal to connect my ipad to ?
Nmea interface ?

Simon
Click to expand...
If the antenna wire has been loose then it could have been transmitting without an antenna and done the transmitter some damage.
The only way you can check everything is through a wired connection.
If you want to post it to me I can check it out. Only cost is return postage. I have a working one on my boat by the way.
Stu
 
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