Garmin's Marine Wi-Fi Adapter Kit

[baz]

This device from Garmin is a bit spendy at $199.99 and includes pre-configuration ready for use by Garmin and provides communication between the Garmin ChartPlotter and an iOS device such as iPad and iPhone running Garmin's BlueChart Mobile application. Compare this to Amazon's $80 for same device but in its native configuration.

Has anyone purchased this device from Garmin and used it ? If so what has been your experience using it ?

See https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/prod129410.html Part Number: 010-11981-00

 

[HRowland]

Hi Barry,

Jeff at Active Captain said he could make the configuration settings available if allowed by Garmin. The problem is the amount of multicast data generated by the RADAR and Sounder. This needs to be filtered and not all routers can handle this without crashing. If you leave the RADAR off then a standard WiFi router will work to transfer routes to/from the chartplotter. There is a little bit of information available, see:

http://www.patmcqueen.com/home/garminmarine

I have a first generation iPad which does not support Blue Chart mobile. When I upgrade to a newer model I will do some analysis of the Garmin network using Wireshark and see if a modern high performance router can handle the bandwidth when filtering RADAR and Sounder data. It should be possible and a general purpose router would be much more useful than the dedicated device. I have a long range WiFi external antenna/radio (Rogue Wave) and use a basic WiFi router to distribute this to various on board devices. I plan to upgrade the router to something that can handle the Garmin network and still distribute the long range WiFi to the iThings, Kindle, and laptops that we use.

Howard

 

[PicoGoss]

i have installed the wifi kit on my 2010 R25C. I knew it came with a 120V power supply and knowingly accepted the stupidity of that choice on Garmin's part. I guess I was naive enough to assume that a 12V POE injector would be easy to find. I just want two Ethernet ports and two 12V power terminals. Has anyone else found such a beast?

 

[HRowland]

Garmin thinks this will be primarily used on large yachts where 120VAC is always available. You can make or purchase a different injector to use 12V boats power. The Garmin WiFi adapter is a reconfigured Ubquiti Picostation. You can find information about using 12V to power these. One warning, Ubquiti does not use standards based POE (Power Over Ethernet). You must use a passive POE injector. One link discussing powering a Picostation is: http://community.ubnt.com/t5/Installati ... d-p/225927

There are more if you search.
I have a Rogue Wave long range WiFi on my R27, this uses a reprogrammed Ubquiti Bullet that is powered in the same manner as the Picostation. The Rogue comes with both 12V and 120VAC power injectors.

Howard