"kirwoodd" wrote in news:1168100467.974287.297950@
51g2000cwl.googlegroups.com:
Yeah, it would be great to go to best buy and get an ethernet hub for
the boat. It would rely on 120vac (but that is fixable) and it would
allow me runs up to 300', repeaters, and routing. JUST what I need on a
43' boat.
Hmm...all my little routers/hubs/wifi routers run on 12VDC from the
little bricks plugged into the UPS. Converting them to the boat means
plugging in a cigarette lighter cord.
One must admit it would be really cool to be able to attach your wifi-
connected laptop to whatever instrument is on the network...or all of
them at once...without the wires, whereever you happen to be. I have
Lionheart so configured on NMEA 0183 with a Webfoot plugged into the RS-
232C computer port on the Noland multiplexer. Webfoot converts serial to
TCP/IP with full DHCP addressing. It's plugged into a Netgear wifi
router. "Virtual Serial Port" software comes with Webfoot so you can
address it over any network. All you need is its IP address...even from
the beach! The Cap'n, our nav software, connects to COM3 (the VSP fake
serial port) and doesn't know the difference. I can connect up to 255
computers to the Webfoot's IP and have had 4 connected simultaneously it
feeds data to. Of course, it's best if you don't have more than one
Cap'n sending back data to the network because The Cap'ns can't talk to
each other over the wifi as they don't know about the others....(c;
When I first got it running I took the laptop up to a beanbag under the
genoa and steered from there. Crabber toilet floats are easier to see
without the sails in the way. Coming about is more fun. You secure your
beer so it won't spill, click the new waypoint and hollar "Coming
about!" back aft to the winch slaves tending sails. Now retrimmed on the
new tack, your beer is waiting....(c;
Ethernet is AWESOME when you have LOTS of hosts that you want/need to
address individually. Note how well multicast has done. If they used
ethernet for the NMEA spec, it would be a total horror show. AND all of
your devices would cost more as the manufacturers would have to do MORE
software engineering to compensate for ethernets shortcomings for this
applicaiton. Dont get me wrong, NMEA is totally bjorked, but using
ethernet would NOT have been the answer. If manufacturers want to use
ethernet for their proprietary data transfers, thats cool, but why make
my temp sensor use a heavy ethernet interface?
I'm sitting here talking to a friend on my wifi Skype phone from Netgear:
http://www.netgear.com/Products/Comm...pe/SPH101.aspx
He's in Moncton, NB. It's free.
I can't help, thinking about the little wifi transceiver in this phone,
how wonderful it would be for BOATERS, not dealers, if you simply plugged
your new GPS/Plotter into 12VDC and it attached itself to the boat's wifi
router, plug n play, announcing to all the other wifi instruments,
controllers, plotters, etc., that it was new and here and at 192.168.1.35
for a connection. Anyone needing GPS data would simply connect to one of
its 65,535 ports and start sucking on that tit for GPS data. At
802.11g's 108Mbps, of course, there'd be zero waiting, no matter how many
wifi gadgets were on the boat isolated from the rest of the wifi world.
We'd simply eliminate ALL data wires radiating like hell all over the
boat to screw up the HF receiver and BE screwed up by the HF
transmitter...(c;
I for one welcome our new CAN bearing overlords and am looking forward
to their benelovent, data sharing rule.
Oh, me, too! It's always fun to watch the NMEA action and see what the
next round of proprietary nonsense comes out trying to stop me from
connecting a Garmin gadget to a Raymarine gadget to a B&G gadget to a
Furuno gadget.
Oh, by the way....with wifi, the analog radar display would be STREAMED
as one of the compressed video streams to anyone who wanted to connect to
it. You can watch the radar from your bunk on any browser from the
radar's own webpage interface....same as the masthead steerable webcam
looking over the horizon on its webpage in realtime. You can even show
them to the nice folks back home if you connect the Ethernet on the
satellite phone to our boat's router...at great expense, of course. Just
plug the webcam up top into 12V and it'll logon to the DHCP same as
everyone else.
Yep, CAN is THE way to go!