Data Sharing with Simrad GoFree

[gdavids]

I am currently running OpenCPN 3.2.2 on a dedicated pc in my nav station, while using a Simrad NSS8 in the cockpit. I also have the GoFree wifi integration. The GoFree works great to send wind/depth/speed data from the NSS8 to OpenCPN. What I would like to do is use the same connection to send AIS info from OpenCPN to the NSS8. The NSS only has one NMEA0183 port, which I would like to use to connect to the autopilot, which of course is a different baud rate than the AIS.

For some reason the GoFree is easily passing data from the NSS to the PC, but I can't seem to get it to pass data from the PC to the NSS. I made sure to check the "output on this port" box. I also did output filtering to transmit AIVDM and AIVDO sentences.

The AIS data is coming from a SH GX2100 wired into a port on the PC. Everything is displayed fine on OpenCPN. I can also run this in parallel to the NSS's NMEA port with success, but of course then I get no autopilot (Raymarine) integration.

Is there anything I am missing? Should this work?

I will probably end up adding an NMEA 0183 to NMEA 2000 adapter to convert the data from the AIS receiver to something that can be added to the Simnet. I just thought it would be nice to be able to do this using the integration of OpenCPN and the GoFree.

Greg

[muttnik]

It won't work: GoFree's "tier 1" nmea-0183 service (ie the datastream you're connecting to) is output only. Writing back to it doesn't result in an error but what you write back will simply be dropped.

From this doc:
http://www.simrad-yachting.com/Globa...cification.pdf

in Section 4.4

Two way communication is not currently supported. Data transmitted by mobile devices to the MFDs will be ignored.

I'm not sure what it is that marine electronics manufacturers seem to find so hard about writing a proper TCP server which does two way communication but it seems to be a minority of "marine" serial-to-wifi devices which support this

[gdavids]

Thanks for that. I will now definitely move on to that other plan of converting the 0183 data into 2000 data and inserting it into the simnet.

Cheers.