Muxing NMEA data over IP WiFi on Windows

[Peter McNamara]

Hello

Firstly I wish to sincerely thank any of the developers of OpenCPN who may read my thread for all their hard work in making your application the success it is. I had struggled without much success with an alternative commercial solution on my yacht for over 12 months. So now I have resigned to the fact my related investment in more recent "encrypted" versions of C-map vector maps appear to have been a dead end. Incidentally these maps appear to be no more up to date than the CM93 sources in Southern Australia where I sail.

Anyway I am wondering if any readers may have experience with Muxing NMEA data over WiFi based IP on Windows7 (64bit). I have experimented with getting 2 PCs to share this data with limited success. Does anyone have a recommended step by step "cake recipe" I can follow to setup the "host" and "slave" PCs as a WiFi LAN?

I expect the "host" PC that forwards the NMEA data from hard wired sources would likely require a static IP address then modifications to the Windows 7 firewall involved to allow the data out and then in to the "slave PC".

Has anyone had success getting this working reliably? If so does it work with more than one slave PC?

Cheers

Peter McNamara

[bcn]

Peter,

have a look at the manual - "Connections".
You will use UDP from your server and the clients just have to listen at the defined UDP port.
No need for static addresses or other complications.
We have for example one ARM/Linux board with AIS and GPS connected and this one forwards the data to the rest of the zoo: XP, W7, W8.1 (via WiFi), OS-X, Debian. All at the same time.
If you have still problems please come back with the set-up you are using (screen shot of the settings at the connections tab).

With respect to charts: you can use now as well the official charts from AHS with the S-63 plug-in for OpenCPN. There are already a few Australian users sailing with those.

Hubert

[Hakan]

Peter…
A rather simple method you can try is to use UDP over your local wifi net.
Now I assume you have one PC running OCPN where all NMEA wirings are connected by one or several serials. This one I call the sender and shall of course also be connected to the wifi.

The other PCs I call receivers and shall also be connected to the same wifi

In the OCPN connection box set up the sender to use a NET connection as output UDP to address 192.168.x.x and port 10110. Priority higher then the rest of your connections.
The incoming filter to receive only ZZZ, e.g. something non-existent, is to hinder the sender to mirror its own data and drown the system.

The receivers shall also use a NET, UDP connection for incoming data listening on address 0.0.0.0 and port 10110. (That's the defaults)

See my examples, although i Swedish I think you can recognize it.
Good luck and please revert if I'm unclear or any other Qs/Håkan

[Peter McNamara]

Many thanks to you both I now have the NMEA data reliably streaming to the receiver or client PC. I suggest this setup may be a useful addition to the connections area in the user manual.

Cheers

Peter Mc

[muttnik]

A little addition for anyone trying a beta release....

In recent betas you can make a data connection "output only" which removes the complication of setting interface priorities to avoid data loops (as Hakan mentioned). After checking the "output on this port" box uncheck the "receive input on this port" box. This more recent data connections set-up is documented in the beta wiki:
Data Connections | Official OpenCPN Homepage

[Hakan]

Muttnik...
Ooooh, nice! Although having last betas I've missed that. (My screen dumps was done earlier.) But the ZZZ-filter is still valid for the stable not-beta versions of OCPN.
Thanks Håkan