Yacht Devices YDWG-02N wifi gateway

[sierracierra]

Anyone else have a Yacht Devices Wifi Gateway Installed on their boat? I did until the unit appears to have failed this season. It is out of warranty, and there is no available support from the manufacturer. I was wondering if anyone else had experiences to share pertaining to this device/company.

I was quite happy with it when it was working, but now it has failed I'm reluctant to repurchase the same model as three years service, about 200 actual hours, is not what I would consider "seaworthy".

Anyone with a replacement?

Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[SJI Sailor]

I've had one for 1 year and no problems. As to lasting 3 years, sadly that strikes me as not too surprising for a network device. Still quite annoying.

Two thoughts. Does it have a hard reset button? (Am away from ours or I'd look.) Second, as for a replacement, what is the main use case for you? GPS sharing, or general NMEA data, or ...? And sharing to ... an iPad or ...?

We use ours mostly for GPS sharing to multiple devices, but that has many other solutions such as a BadElf GPS. The NMEA data is nice to have but used much less often.

 

[sierracierra]

Hello SJI Sailor,

It does have a reset button, but it does not appear to have any affect. The Red/Green LED was not on, and the wifi network did not "see" the device.

I was using it for a couple of reasons, it gave me an additional display that could show engine parameters, GPS position, Depth on a chart. Sharing to an iPad mainly. NMEA Data...

I thought it was handy, not essential. I went to the trouble of mounting an iPad next to my chartplotter and would like to it display some of the "other" stuff. Was wondering if another company produced a similar device.

Thanks for the reply,
Glenn

 

[Severum88]

Maybe use the iPad with Navionics for your navigation/plotting, and use the main console for your NEMA gauges and depth?

12.9" iPad next to 7612 12" plotter looks great. Almost OEM? 😉

 

[johnbenj]

Hello SJI Sailor,

It does have a reset button, but it does not appear to have any affect. The Red/Green LED was not on, and the wifi network did not "see" the device.

Is there a chance that your NMEA bus isn't providing power to the device this season? Have you tried to use another drop and / or some other way to test that theory?

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk

 

[SJI Sailor]

Having an iPad backup is a good idea. Our chartplotter went out one time (bad SD card) and we used our iPad as backup until that was solved. More often the Admiral uses the iPad at the nav seat to review course options etc.

Assuming it is a non GPS iPad model, the next best solution would be an external GPS puck such as Bad Elf. Those work over Bluetooth (and are great; I have one of those that I also often use for aviation charts. Although GPS reception in the passenger section of airliners is mostly difficult, sometimes impossible (787). But I digress.)

Another option would be a phone app that shares phone GPS over Bluetooth. I am aware of those but haven't tried. Might be Android only. That could be a temporary fix.

For my 0.02 I think iPad chart backup is sufficiently useful that I would probably go with the flexible BT GPS device. OTOH that would have none of the NMEA data and requires keeping another device charged.

I'm not aware of an alternative to the YD WiFi device. Would be interested however!

 

[sierracierra]

I did try a different NMEA drop to confirm that NMEA wasn't the problem. The device itself appears to have died, I removed part of the plastic case in the remote chance it was something obvious, nothing these old eyes noticed as suspicious.

Thanks for the suggestions to consider chartplotter solutions, I do like the second display as the space to the left of the chartplotter is certainly usable. If the admiral wins the lottery I'd consider dual chartplotters but the iPad will suffice for now.

Thanks for the input, all is appreciated,
Safe Boating,
Glenn