GoFree working with OpenCPN

[simonpickard]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone has used the GoFree wireless tech to supply OpenCPN with Wind / Depth / GPS / AIS?

GoFree


Can this be done? Seems like it would be a good tidy solution. I'd be on a Mac, but that shouldn't make any difference.

Anyone out there got this setup running?

Regards,
Simon

[muttnik]

Here's the base spec without the annoying autoplaying marketing blurb:
http://www.bandg.com/Documents/produ...language=en-GB

I could be wrong but I think the only magic here is that the address and port of the tcp server the MFD provides is announced via multicast. I think (I've never played with this stuff) you should just be able to add a tcp data connection in opencpn.

A little googling shows this panbo article:
Panbo: The Marine Electronics Hub: Navico GoFree, WiFi1 & the 0183 Link
apparently confirming my assumption and giving an example of obtaining the IP address and port of the tcp server you'll need to set up a data connection to in opencpn.

Of course then we have to work out how these MFDs assign addresses so we can avoid having to reconfigure opencpn every time we switch things on. A couple of articles seem to suggest DHCP, or failing that a self-assigned RFC 3927 address but I'll leave answering that to someone who actually knows what they're talking about while I try and find some manuals :-)

[simonpickard]

Thanks for the reply. Sounds like it might be possible then? Would be amazing if so.
I tried a demo of the GoFree system at the Sydney boat show and the iPad control and iPhone viewing was wonderful. It's a shame they don't have a native PC / Mac app as well, but I like the idea of using OpenCPN as a second charting system, but able to get all it's data via GoFree.

[muttnik]

Originally Posted by simonpickard

Thanks for the reply. Sounds like it might be possible then? Would be amazing if so.

Absolutely it should be possible. The marketing blurb mentions inavx and iregatta as clients. An example of setting up inavx as a client is to be found in the manual addendum associated with their NSS software update:
http://www.simrad-yachting.com/Root/...-10490-001.pdf
Looks distinctly like there's no use of the service discovery gofree stuff: this is just using the NSS as a basic server for NMEA-0183 over TCP and opencpn can connect to that already (see the data connections part of the opencpn manual).

After trawling the simrad and B&G web sites I'm still not clear on how you can guarantee that your MFD will not change IP address. The docs say the devices use a dhcp server and fall back to zeroconf. There's no mention of being able to assign a fixed IP address that I could find in the manual. The simrad wifi module has an integrated dhcp server. I may have missed it but there seems to be no way to tell it to associate a particular IP address with a particular hardware address. Obviously none of that matters if you're doing the full gofree thing listening for service location updates, but for ocpn, inavx etc. it might be a PiTA having to check settings when reconnecting. Of course I could be completely wrong and just overlooked the way to do this: Anyone actually got this stuff set up?

[simonpickard]

Just bumping this up, anyone out there have a go free pushing data to opencpn?

Regards,
Simon

[norm_g]

I tried it this past weekend without any success. I know the GoFree is working properly as I can pickup the NSS using the GoFree app on my samsung tablet and see all the pages. I can get the laptop to connect to the GoFree but I'm not getting any data streaming to OpenCPN so I suspect it's a setup issue. I was just searching through the posts here again looking for some more hints and ran across someone claiming they did get it to work using port port 10110. (http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...-30946-30.html)

Unfortunately I won't be able to get a chance to try again for a few weekends.

[RobbieW]

Just found this thread by linking from the one on the Navico radar plugin, http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/....php?p=1551455.

I have an NSS8 which I've had providing OCPN on a laptop with GPS data, theres a bunch of other stuff being sent as well but I only have a 3G radar plugged in to the NSS. In my case I have a router on the boat, connected the NSS8 to the router by putting an ethernet switch in the radar data connection, between radar and RI10. The NSS sees that and gets itself a DHCP address from my router, all I need to do is define a connection using the router assigned IP address for the NSS with port 10110.

I have observed that the NSS MFD reports the IP address its using in one of the Settings pages, probably Network.

I guess thats not exactly using GoFree but the mechanism cant be that different.

[norm_g]

Sorry to have been silent for so long, its been a rough spring. Well I got it to work several weeks ago with my laptop running both OpenCPN and PolarView NS. I can see a complete NMEA 2000 stream from all of the devices on the network through the GoFree. It was just a matter of getting the right IP and port off the NSS. The IP was 192.168.0.11 and the port was 10110. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to play with anything other than streaming the information available while sitting at dock. Hopefully I'll get a chance to play with the radar plug-in and the autopilot sometime in the very near future.