My wifi setup on my boat currently consists of a Max Transit Duo Pro (running 8.3.0 firmware) with a starlink set up as a wan source using the starlink Ethernet adapter. This works great and all devices connect to the Pepink over wifi quite happily.
I have a separate WiFi network which is created by a Comar i320W NMEA to WiFi bridge. This takes data feeds from the boat’s instruments and AIS receiver and broadcasts them over WiFi, which allows me to view the data on my phone or iPad. This works fine with the Comar set up as a separate wifi access point, but the downside is that I then need to manually disconnect from the Pepwave and connect to the Comar to access the boat data, at which point my device no longer has access to the internet via Pepwave WAN.
The Comar manual at: https://www.milltechmarine.com/customer2/i320W-MA-v06r01.pdf shows that the device can also be set to operate as a WiFi client on an existing network, which is what I want to do. This way I should be able to access the data while connected to my Pepwave without having to change connections. However whenever I try to follow the steps to do this I’m unable to connect to the Comar over the Pepwave network. I’ve reached out to Comar support but they have not been overly helpful and I’m hoping someone here may be able to advise? I’m no networking expert and just trying to figure this out!
The Comar team indicated that I need to enter the IP address, Net Mask and Gateway that I want the unit to have on the pepwave network, or alternatively I can select DHCP in which case I will need to find out the IP address assigned by the server.
I know the IP, Net Mask and Port that the Comar uses by default and have tried to preserve these, but don’t know what value to use for Gateway. I’ve also tried selecting DHCP, when I assume I should be able to see the IP assigned to the Comar somehow when I go into the Pepwave admin tool, but don’t see any way to see the device.
I’m wondering if I need to set something up in the Pepwave admin panel to allow it to register the Comar and assign the correct details to it? Any thoughts or suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Apologies again if this sounds like a very dumb newbie question!
Thanks
Neil
Response from Comar support:
When setting up the unit for WIFI client mode there are basically two areas to configure. The rest of the settings are not affected.
WIFI:
Set the WiFi mode to “Client” and enter the SSID and WiFi Key of the WIFI network you want to connect to.
Connection:
Enter the IP address, Net Mask and Gateway you want the i320W unit to have in the network. You can also select DHCP and it will automatically receive these from the DHCP server. Just be aware that if you then want to connect to the TCP or UDP server on the i320W you will have to find out the IP address it has been given through the DHCP server.
Then just set up the protocol you want to use and its details:
I hope this helps. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.