vYacht router - any good ?

[salar]

Simple answer to the original question - my experience with vYacht Wifi and the support from Berndt has been excellent, although I was only interested in NMEA0183. He did some tweaks so I could send depth data to my tablet running Navionics, so I now have Live Sonar Charts running at a fraction of the cost of the nearest (Navionics approved) alternative.

 

[Heckler]

Simple answer to the original question - my experience with vYacht Wifi and the support from Berndt has been excellent, although I was only interested in NMEA0183. He did some tweaks so I could send depth data to my tablet running Navionics, so I now have Live Sonar Charts running at a fraction of the cost of the nearest (Navionics approved) alternative.

do you know his email address? he seems to ignore the web page enquiries.
Stu

 

[PaulRainbow]

do you know his email address? he seems to ignore the web page enquiries.
Stu

bernd@vyacht.net Don't hold your breath waiting for a reply though.

 

[lpdsn]

I don't think it has a problem with any particular PGN's, although i haven't done any in depth testing. It just does not show all AIS targets when i switch the Garmin VHF300 to N2K. I just updated to the .21 firmware and it is the same. Older firmware, from 1.3.12 to 1.3.19 had all manner of problems with the conversions. .12 placed all target in a heap about 400 miles away !

Out of interest, why are you converting to N2K before sending to the vYacht ? Sending it 0183 would reduce it's workload.

If it is not all targets showing maybe it is just overload caused by the N2K conversions. I eventually get the targets over WiFi although they take much longer, and often far longer for the static data to be uploaded.

I'm building up towards using N2K generally, so wanted the WiFi to support that. I convert the AIS to display it on an i70. I've now gone the way of normally connecting my tablet over USB so in that arrangement the AIS data gets there without going over the N2K bus.

It's the PGNs supported that will determine what AIS information you can see. The 0183 VDM sentence is the equivalent of a whole bunch of N2K PGNs. I've never seen it documented which of them the vYacht supports.

 

[Yngmar]

Fred drift: I have an NSS8; I'd got as far as discovering that the OS is an 'x variant but hadnt found a way into it. One thing I'd like to do is transfer routes created in OCPN to the NSS without having to use 'sneakernet' - putting the .gpx file on the uSD card then importing it into the NSS. If you've found a way through logins that work (or any other way), I'd be interested - thanks (perhaps I should add that the NSS appears on my network; I use the Navico radar plugin with OCPN. I'll also say that adding a connection in OCPN to port 10110 on the NSS (the gofree service?) realises a stream of 0183 sentences).

No idea about the NSS8, but even if it had some method of logging into the OS, it would probably do you no good for the purpose of uploading waypoints. Now that we've established that vYacht does not (yet) permit N2k writes, the most likely road to success would be sending waypoints/routes via NMEA0183 sentences (the Simard CP31 claims to understand WPL, RTN and RNN). If your NSS8 has an '83 input and understands those, give that a try.

More on track, a few years ago in my search for a router that could combine several functions I ran kplex on a Tomato based router to get 0183 from 3 sources onto wifi. Where that ran into trouble was initiating 3G/4G dongles to get internet connections, during that initiation sequence the serial/usb converter drivers got hosed and the whole needed rebooting to recover - as the 3G service dropped out frequently this was a not uncommon experience. Routers with more modern kernels and dongles may be more resilient, I've not got around to trying again (still using Tomato for various reasons). What I did was separate function so the internet connection ran on its own router with the boat wifi being served by the Tomato device running kplex getting internet through a WAN connection. The point of this rambling is simply to warn that mixing USB source device types may be troublesome in router 'x implementations!

My router is a Alfa R36 running OpenWRT (same as the vYacht box). I only have SeaTalk1, the NMEA data from the Raymarine serial converter box could go into that via a USB hub and two RS422 to USB adapters (the other one is for the AIS receiver). But for practical reasons, that USB hub is actually plugged into the OpenCPN laptop on the navdesk, which runs kplex and makes it available to the Wifi network that way - doesn't matter where it runs as long as they're all on the same network. I had some "fun" with the Huawei 4G stick that is plugged into the R36, but seem to have tamed it at last.

 

[PaulRainbow]

If it is not all targets showing maybe it is just overload caused by the N2K conversions.

I( suspect that might be the case. for now, sending 0183 AIS to the vYacht is working OK. Everything else on the boat is N2K though and the Garmin VHf300 will do N2K too, so this year i'll look into some alternatives. I'm serious considering fitting a plotter in the cockpit and just using the vYacht at the chart table for planning. It would make more sense for me as i could fit the almost new HD radar that sits at home in the spare bedroom.

 

[RobbieW]

...I had some "fun" with the Huawei 4G stick that is plugged into the R36, but seem to have tamed it at last.

You might find ROOter interesting, its an OpenWRT variant thats been modified to (much) better handle data sticks - http://ofmodemsandmen.com/. If the R36 doesnt already have a build the author is pretty responsive at this time year (hes a dairy farmer in Canada) in providing specific builds through the support forum on Whirlpool (follow the link on the webpage).

 

[RobbieW]

No idea about the NSS8, but even if it had some method of logging into the OS, it would probably do you no good for the purpose of uploading waypoints. ...

I was thinking more of using WinSCP to copy the route file onto the uSD media whilst its plugged into the NSS then importing it using the (NSS) builtin function.