Internet connected boat WiFi working
It has taken me forever to sort this out. However, it has suddenly come to together very neatly and quickly.
With two separate boxes we have 5G and 2.4G Wifi networks on the boat that we can connect to an external WiFi network.
Digital Yacht WL510
We have had this box for a long time but had to get a lot of supporting elements in place for it to work. It uses a 1m WiFi booster antenna which is halfway up our mizzen mast. This connects to the WL510 box itself along with a 12v power supply and an ethernet cable to the other box.
GL-iNet AC1300 Slate Plus
This has been the game changer for getting things working in a very simple way. It is a tiny WiFi router designed for travellers to use in hotel rooms etc. However, what I love about is that the software is OpenWRT. That gives me open source, free software providing excellent security and control. This uses a USB-C power connector so will be easy to run off the boat 12v system, the WAN port connects to the WL510.
Connecting
This setup is very easy to use. Any device on the boat can connect wirelessly using WiFi to the AC1300 and that shares the Wifi that the WL510 is connected to. Any device on the boat only needs to know about this WiFi and can connect to it automatically. So the outboard connection to the internet is hidden and transparent for all uses.
Currently we only have external WiFi internet connections working (using the WL510), later I have another GL-iNet box that will allow us to use mobile phone networks. It would be possible to add Starlink or a Musk free, more ethical option.
The admin page of the AC1300 allows easy configuration of all the internet options and makes it easy to setup rules for which should be used (for example favouring external WiFi over mobile).
Once we are connected to the boat WiFi we can login to the admin web page for the WL510. From here we can select which WiFi network it uses for internet access (from the boatyard we can see around 20 WiFi networks). Using our club WiFi has been almost impossible on the boat, the signal is just too weak. The WL510 gives a great signal, the speed is just as good as when sitting in the clubhouse.
Raspberry Pi stuff
Next step is our Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant. Home Assistant prefers a wired Ethernet connection. So I can connect the Pi5 with an Ethernet cable to one of the two Ethernet ports on the AC1300.
One new option that the AC1300 gives is to attach USB storage and make it available as network storage. This gives extra options and might mean I don't have a dedicated media player Raspberry Pi. If I still go for a separate Pi5 for media then I might use the last ethernet port for that.
I plan to use WiFi for the navigation computer, that's pretty much ready to go using OpenCpn, I just need to sort out the extra displays for that to give cockpit chartplotter access.
