GPS client mode

Since some time, a lot of peplink products already allow to act as a GPS server, using & serving NMEA messages collected from the internal GPS chip.

In our usecase however, the Pepwave unit is inside a moving ship, with our own equipment being mounted outdoors (which also has the ability to act as a GPS server using TCP)

In this case, it would be very nice to configure the Pepwave device to not get it’s GPS input from the on-board receiver, but from another TCP source.

Summarized:

  • Today, the only GPS source is the unit’s internal GPS chip
  • Allow to specifiy another source to fetch GPS NMEA data. (TCP, specifying IP + Port)
  • Still allow to locally acts as a GPS server by forwarding/converting the received sentences

Kind Regards,

Koen

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Are you looking for GPS Forwarding? If so, below is the tips and tricks.

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Hi,

The request is for the pepwave unit itself to get GPS data from another
server.

Thus, NOT using the internal GPS chip as primary source.

Regards

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There is another case for this feature:

We now use a Balancer 210, which is installed on a ship.
Currently, it is only possible to set a fixed position for this model as it does not contain GPS hardware.
When the ship is sailing out … the position is not correct anymore.

It would be very very nice if this unit would have the option to fetch NMEA sentences from a remote device

Some basic menu structure that would be compatible for all peplink products:

  • Set GPS coordinates fixed (default for products lacking GPS hardware internally)
  • Use internal GPS hardware to fetch current location (Default for most products)
  • Fetch GPS coordinates (NMEA sentences) from following server (TCP):
    → IP:Port

When the device makes a TCP connection, the server starts sending NMEA sentences over the socket, which the device decodes and uses.
When the Pepwave device closes the socket, the server is notified automatically and stops sending.

+1

This is similar to the case pointed out by our Rural Fire Services in New South Wales customer.
HD4 is installed in a helicopter and used to stream video back to the base 380 via speedfusion tunnel.
This project is working really fine.
HD4 is just using the existing LTE antenna setup on this vehicle.
and because it’s a very difficult process and expensive exercise to setup new antenna system for the GPS, i.e. making holes in the helicopter, the builtin GPS modem of HD4 was not used.

However, there’s already a GPSD server running on the Computer connected to the HD4 in the helicopter. It has all the NEMA GPS data it is receiving from the aircraft GPS system. Instead of installing another antenna for the Peplink is there a way that the Peplink can connect to and received GPS data from a GPSD server via the LAN.

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any updates on this?

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Please and update on this would be much appreciated?

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Hello @TK_Liew, do you have any updates on this please?

or is there some API’s we could call or is there a SDK we could use?

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Bringing this back up…

Our onboard navigation software can repeat NMEA data sentences across the network. If the Pepwave router could accept this (highly accurate) data, it would eliminate the need to run an additional GPS antenna or at least provide redundancy. Maybe it could even support vessel heading data (HDT)? Also, we would like to display knots instead of mph on the tracking map, if possible.

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Any update on this from the peplink team?
Even when it’s a nack.

Thanks

@Koen_Vandeputte @rocknolds @markwiggs ,

Engineering team is considering the request. The most challenge part is that there are too many GPS source devices running in the market that we have no ways to restrict the methods & format.

As for now , Engineering team is considering to accepting “Raw NMEA 0183 Network Steam UDP/TCP” as the GPS source input . In-order words, if your GPS receiver device able to forward GPS stream using the mentioned method then it can be work as the GPS input for the device. Tentatively this have been scheduled for firmware 8.2.0 or above.

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+1 for this kind of capability please. Have customers with both autonomous surface vehicles and land based heavy plant / excavators who already have super accurate GNSS equipment onboard.

Need to be able to either forward GPS tracking to a MAX device as a target, or configure the MAX to open a connection to (or listen to broadcast data from) a GNSS device.

@lewisk

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Can’t you attach a pepwave to another pepwave location on InControl ? ( I know it isn’t exactly the same but does the trick on the map )

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Yes you can. But in my customers case the GPS location comes from a furuno gnss compass rather than another Peplink device.

So currently the only option is to update location via IC2 API - which is fine (sometimes) but is another piece of code / compute required onboard.

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Bump. We have clients with this same need. Our users are using the Balance 580X (no internal GPS available that I know of) and the GPS is available over the network (TCP).

A quick update on this. We are alpha testing a solution for IBM’s Mayflower autonomous ship where the onboard MAX Transit doesn’t have a GPS antenna attached. The Transit is listening for a UDP broadcast message on a specific port that presents NEMA sentences and then reporting that broadcast location as its GPS location on IC2.

Still in test but it’s working great so far.

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Sounds great!

Are there any updates on this topic? We’re having nearly the same case as discript above. Our BR2 PRO 5G is located in the ships hull so that we are using external modems connected to the WAN ports. This has the main advantage that we can locate the moblie accesses on different positions on the ship. We’re also having a regular GNSS-System onboard which provides serval information as NMEA format.

Is there a chance to get the feature within this year?