Adding wireless to a serial/USB AIS receiver

[Tenedos]

Originally Posted by conachair

Seems a bit extreme

With an pi you can download an image and straight away have easy to set up kplex, i2c temperature sensors running as signalk and nmea, Opencpn, Web browser, access to the gpio pins as ins or outs, wifi hoptspot rebroadcast from a high power usb dongle, send text/email/tweets, a very powerful system running headless for to cost of a few beers.

Hacking a router would certainly be interesting and fun but as far as usefulness onboard goes seems very limited compared to what else is available.

Agreed but there is a little catch Raspberry Pi is an amazing little device with a lot of power and a great OS. However, there are also advantages of more 'embedded like' systems.

Not all but most of them run OpenWrt, a Linux distro targeted for embedded devices. OpenWrt is a really great router operating system. One particular advantage would be to make it an onboard wireless hub with Internet sharing

Pi can act as a hub as well with Internet sharing and such, but only in ad-hoc mode due to chipset limitations. Some of the router boards by definition will be AP quality and they can still do AIS, kplex multiplexing etc (but you wouldn't want to do OpenCPN ;-) ). There is another little box called Carambola2 which is based on Atheros AR9331 SoC, which costs some $25. It makes a perfect WiFi router (AR9331 is essentially a popular chipset for now low-end routers and APs) running OpenWrt.

I have been thinking of combining Adrian's dAISy with a Carambola2 to make an embedded router/multiplexer but that is more of a longer term fun project than anything else.

Anyways, probably went on a long tangent but I could not resist

[muttnik]

Originally Posted by conachair

Hacking a router would certainly be interesting and fun but as far as usefulness onboard goes seems very limited compared to what else is available.

There seems to be quite a few people running open source routers on boats. I've done none of the hard work on porting kplex to various router platforms but several others have and I've benefitted from them finding bugs which didn't manifest on x86 or ARM. Net result is that you end up with decent router hardware possibly with more than one ethernet port. I don't know about your experience but my pi-based access point is usable but seems to be a little flakey and times, not always playing well with my mac (but hey, neither does my cisco access point...)

I've not gone down this path myself (lack of relevant hardware and need) but I suspect that it's in the "distinctly less trivial than setting up a pi" league.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by muttnik

t. I don't know about your experience but my pi-based access point is usable but seems to be a little flakey and times, not always playing well with my mac (but hey, neither does my cisco access point...)
.

Very well behaved so far.. With android and win7 laptop. Plus with vnc you can get straight to the Pi desktop from whatever machine you're on to see if the other usb wifi dongle being echoed is still connected. On passage when it's spitting out nmea data there might have been a reboot needed once in a blue moon but generally solid.

Shame it can't make boatyard/marina wifi more reliable

[capngeo]

I thought English was the official CF language...... what language are you guys speaking in? :-)

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by conachair

Seems a bit extreme

With an pi you can download an image and straight away have easy to set up kplex, i2c temperature sensors running as signalk and nmea, Opencpn, Web browser, access to the gpio pins as ins or outs, wifi hoptspot rebroadcast from a high power usb dongle, send text/email/tweets, a very powerful system running headless for to cost of a few beers.

Hacking a router would certainly be interesting and fun but as far as usefulness onboard goes seems very limited compared to what else is available.

There is no hacking involved. Routers have software update option available at the user's interface level.

You download the image you need and swap the routers old software with the image, all from the old router's update screen (html) level.

The rest is the same as you said above: set up the sensors and the packages plug the nmea and off you go: wired, wireless, bridged, etc.

Off course, an old router will not run OpenCPN - routers do not have video cards onboard.

What I am talking about is not a "a very powerful system running headless for to cost of a few beers" but rather a simple ttl/serial/USB to wifi/ethernet adapter that I build for about 3 USD. And it is a mux at the same time, so I think it is well worth it for someone who wants a serial / wifi adapter.

There are many roads to achieve the same effect. I admire people who build stuff out of blocks but I do so only when I cannot get a pret-a-porter solution.

BTW there is also an image for Pi, so you can run the same solution on a Pi. (Much as this is not necessary when you can just feed your Pi with a Linux distro).

b.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by conachair

Looks like the 3 wires are ground, 5v in & tx from the daisy, rs422 comes out of the adaptor as nmea + & - as you'd expect.

"On a technical level, this adapter translates one 3.3V-5V serial input to a 5V differential signal"

So rs422 is now a 3-wire solution? Last time I checked rs422 was a 4-wire method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-422

Or is this a ttl solution (as suggested by quoted voltage levels)?

ibid

Or do the developers not know what they are talking about?

So to say different people expect different things. I expect a 4-wire rs422 to be +- 6V level, not a 3-wire 3.3/5V level.

I am OK with being wrong and under-educated. Someone PLS enlighten me. What is a rs422, 3-wire, 3.3V interface?

b.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

So rs422 is now a 3-wire solution? Last time I checked rs422 was a 4-wire method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-422

Or is this a ttl solution (as suggested by quoted voltage levels)?

ibid

Or do the developers not know what they are talking about?

So to say different people expect different things. I expect a 4-wire rs422 to be +- 6V level, not a 3-wire 3.3/5V level.

I am OK with being wrong and under-educated. Someone PLS enlighten me. What is a rs422, 3-wire, 3.3V interface?

b.

Looks obvious to me anyway, it's an adaptor from ttl to rs422, the ttl nmea tx from the ais goes into the adaptor where it gets converted into rs422, single ttl goes in, it's only tx so it's 2 wires rs422 come out .
The other wires are power.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by capngeo

I thought English was the official CF language...... what language are you guys speaking in? :-)

Looks C++glish ?

;-)
b.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by conachair

Looks obvious to me anyway, it's an adaptor from ttl to rs422, the ttl nmea tx from the ais goes into the adaptor where it gets converted into rs422, single ttl goes in, it's only tx so it's 2 wires rs422 come out .

The other wires are power.

Out only? OK then. TX+ TX-. Or else NMEA out + Nmea out -.

Enlightened. THX
b.