Wi-Fi on board

[MikeCC]

Thanks for this. It certainly looks like a cost effective solution. I see it comes with a mains adapter with a 12v 1.5amp output. Presumably, I could therefore just wire into the boat 12v supply. Is this what you've done?

I don't know how sensitive to voltage levels the router might be but I would suggest using some sort of voltage regulator to connect to boat 12V. Marine electronics are designed for those fluctuations, other devices maybe not.

 

[Cheeky Girl]

Has anyone one fould a 5gb sim router that doesn't cost >£500?

 

[Gumpy]

No, which is why I am still on 4G, that and the fact that 5G hasn't reached the wilds of Nth Devon

 

[dankilb]

Someone more techy than I was recently explaining to me that 5g mifi is arguably less useful due to 5g’s short range.

If you’re near enough to an antenna, a 5g phone handset should work as a fast hotspot, apparently.

 

[Gumpy]

Someone more techy than I was recently explaining to me that 5g mifi is arguably less useful due to 5g’s short range.

If you’re near enough to an antenna, a 5g phone handset should work as a fast hotspot, apparently.

250 yds from my local mast, close enough ?

 

[dankilb]

250 yds from my local mast, close enough ?

Should certainly think so.

I more meant ‘close’ as in, say, within a 5g-covered urban/populated area - whereas the advantage of a 4g router with a decent antenna is that (supposedly!) it might pick up 4g more remotely (anchorage etc.) and/or stronger than your phone handset.

In this respect, it’s harder to see what a 5g router would achieve above a 5g phone (especially given the prices).

 

[CalicoJack]

So to sum up:
some don’t like the we we access AIS
lots of people talked about different types of remote Wi-Fi hubs
but NOBODY answered the question, is using your phone to piggyback your Wi-Fi on board! Could someone please address this question? Thanks!

 

[requiem]

So to sum up:
some don’t like the we we access AIS
lots of people talked about different types of remote Wi-Fi hubs
but NOBODY answered the question, is using your phone to piggyback your Wi-Fi on board! Could someone please address this question? Thanks!

If your phone has data, and you can use it as a hotspot, then I don't see why it wouldn't work apart from any restrictions the carrier might have (or impose upon detection). It's no different from being on land and tethering a laptop to your phone. It seems to me this is something you could try out now before you try changing any contracts, no?

Personally, I think it makes sense to look into a way to allow the boat to make the connection so you aren't burning through the phone's battery and have a chance at a better signal (e.g. antenna up the mast). This would also allow you to run a wifi network on the boat so you could have your tablet pull from the boat instruments as well as internet. For example, my iPad displays internet AIS targets in orange and boat AIS targets in red. You can do that with the tablet as is, e.g. manually tweak the network settings so that it can get both local boat data and mobile data, but it's more fiddly and you might need to do it each time.

 

[Gumpy]

There is no simple way I know of that you can get your wifi hub on board to use your phone as a source if this is what you mean.
As has been said you can use your phone as a hotspot and this works for some, however your phone will need to be in a position to pick up a 4g signal, also it will disconnect the internet/wifi if you get an incoming call.
Far better to set up a dedicated system independent of your phone.
In the past 25+years that I have been using mobile data I have tried just about every combination and have settled on a dedicated system as being the most reliable way to get online.

 

[Richard10002]

but NOBODY answered the question, is using your phone to piggyback your Wi-Fi on board! Could someone please address this question? Thanks!

I thought it had been answered. No reason not to do it. It works great for many and, if it works for you, carry on.

For others, there us an inconvenience, or a signal that isn't good enough.

I find it inconvenient to piggy back off my phone, so have Huawei router and an external antenna.

 

[Daverw]

So to sum up:
some don’t like the we we access AIS
lots of people talked about different types of remote Wi-Fi hubs
but NOBODY answered the question, is using your phone to piggyback your Wi-Fi on board! Could someone please address this question? Thanks!

Hotspot works ok with good signal but better with external antenna to a 4 g hub, also allows phone to use wifi which helps phone battery and signal for calls

 

[geem]

I thought it had been answered. No reason not to do it. It works great for many and, if it works for you, carry on.

For others, there us an inconvenience, or a signal that isn't good enough.

I find it inconvenient to piggy back off my phone, so have Huawei router and an external antenna.

That's interesting. I suspect if you had a really good upto date phone you will have no issues using your phone as normal with the hotspot turned on. This is certainly the case for me. With a friend onboard connecting his laptop to my hotspot, my wife connected on her iPad and me on the internet, everything worked perfectly. We had various devices connected over 10 days all through my phone and never once has a connection issue. We certainly have no need for a WiFi hub

 

[CalicoJack]

Thanks! I knew that you wouldn’t let me down.

 

[Richard10002]

That's interesting. I suspect if you had a really good upto date phone you will have no issues using your phone as normal with the hotspot turned on. This is certainly the case for me. With a friend onboard connecting his laptop to my hotspot, my wife connected on her iPad and me on the internet, everything worked perfectly. We had various devices connected over 10 days all through my phone and never once has a connection issue. We certainly have no need for a WiFi hub

Thats why i said it works well for many?

 

[HereBeDragons]

I would recommend setting up a dedicated modem for the boat. Teltonika makes good ones that you can power off the 12V system.

We have the RutX11 on our boat, and it is definitely more powerful than our phones. We often see 3-4 bars on it in anchorages where the phone is at either zero or one bar (both use the same operator).

When we sailed to Sweden last year, we got Swedish LTE before we could see the land ?

Seabits has a bunch of good articles about boat WiFi setups Internet - SeaBits

I’ve got a Teltonika in my yacht, from when we lived aboard in the Med.

It‘s a great unit, does a ping frequently and if no response, will reset the connection, which saves a lot of power off and on and signal dropping out.

My only gripe is the sim slot is underneath a panel held down with four tiny screws. Fine if you’re in one country, but when we were cruising around the med, swapping SIM cards between France and Spain and whatnot was a nuisance.

 

[bergie]

My only gripe is the sim slot is underneath a panel held down with four tiny screws. Fine if you’re in one country, but when we were cruising around the med, swapping SIM cards between France and Spain and whatnot was a nuisance.

My Teltonika unit has the SIM cards in slots that pop out when you poke them with a pin (like on most mobile phones). It also has two SIM slots, so you can keep the domestic card in one, and insert a local one to the other (and then in the admin UI tell the modem which to use).

Of course depends a lot where the modem is mounted whether this makes it easy to access. This Youtuber I found has the same Teltonika modem on top of his mast. Great connectivity and range, not so convenient SIM swapping ?

I’m pretty happy with our setup. Obviously overkill for most sailors, but for us the boat is also the summer office, so good internet is a must.

 

[Daverw]

I’ve got a Teltonika in my yacht, from when we lived aboard in the Med.

It‘s a great unit, does a ping frequently and if no response, will reset the connection, which saves a lot of power off and on and signal dropping out.

My only gripe is the sim slot is underneath a panel held down with four tiny screws. Fine if you’re in one country, but when we were cruising around the med, swapping SIM cards between France and Spain and whatnot was a nuisance.

Newer models have SIM card slots that make it very easy

 

[HappyAfloat]

I thought it had been answered. No reason not to do it. It works great for many and, if it works for you, carry on.

For others, there us an inconvenience, or a signal that isn't good enough.

I find it inconvenient to piggy back off my phone, so have Huawei router and an external antenna.

We do both.

Our Huawei router with an external antenna has wi-fi extender mode turn on. If the mobile phone hotspot is available the router will use this first otherwise will fall back to the internal sim card.

Using this setup we can easily juggle data allowances on various mobile contracts and network reception issues.

also it will disconnect the internet/wifi if you get an incoming call.

This must be a phone feature, our phones don't drop the hotspot/internet on receiving incoming calls.

 

[tudorsailor]

I agree that using internet derived AIS is not safe. I would suggest that you buy an AIS receiver that then transmits it wirelessly. You can pick it up your iPad and integrate it with Navionics
QK-A026 AIS Receiver with NMEA Multiplexer + WiFi + GPS - Quark-elec, NMEA 2000 gateway multiplexer, Marine NMEA 0183 multiplexer, NMEA converter in UK
TS

 

[bergie]

I agree that using internet derived AIS is not safe. I would suggest that you buy an AIS receiver that then transmits it wirelessly. You can pick it up your iPad and integrate it with Navionics
QK-A026 AIS Receiver with NMEA Multiplexer + WiFi + GPS - Quark-elec, NMEA 2000 gateway multiplexer, Marine NMEA 0183 multiplexer, NMEA converter in UK
TS

The cheap DIY way of doing that is having a Raspberry Pi (with the appropriate software) receiving AIS via a digital TV USB stick and transmitting it over the boat WiFi (Raspberry Pi could also form the WiFi if needed). We had that setup on our previous boat and it worked great. On our current boat we wanted to also transmit AIS so we needed a commercial device.

The RPi AIS setup was less than 100€ all together, with a DIY antenna mounted to our solar arch.

GitHub - dgiardini/rtl-ais: A simple AIS tuner and generic dual-frequency FM demodulator
Cruising sailboat electronics setup with Signal K