May 12, 2021  Outgoing connections in Ethernet Gateway

Our new firmware supports GST, BWR and GNS sentences. The mDNS (Bonjour) support was fixed, support of outgoing connections added.

Outgoing TCP connection to Simrad GO XSR port with NMEA 0183 data

We are glad to present the 1.21 firmware update for Ethernet Gateway. We added bi-directional conversion of GST and BWR sentences, conversion of GNS sentence to PGN 129547, and conversion of DBS, DBK and DBT sentences to NMEA 2000. The obsoleted DBS, DBK and DBT are only processed when the DPT sentence is not available. The DBS and DBT are also produced along with DPT when the water depth is converted from NMEA 2000 in all our products.

We fixed the mDNS support and now you can discover the Ethernet Gateway by a hostname. For example, you can open the administrative web site by the address http://yden.local (factory setting, can be changed on the "Ethernet Settings" page). The mDNS works out of the box on Mac and most versions of Linux, and should work with the latest updates on Windows 10. For other Windows versions, you can install Apple Bonjour.

The mDNS (multicast DNS) protocol resolves hostnames to IP addresses within small networks that do not include a local name server. If you do not use the mDNS, we recommend turning it off by setting the domain name to empty value to release memory and CPU resources of Ethernet Gateway for other tasks. The mDNS support is also turned off when the Gateway is loaded in emergency mode (in this mode it uses the fixed IP address 192.168.4.1).

The last addition to this firmware is outgoing connections. On the "NMEA Servers" page you can turn on the outgoing connection to a specified address. The Server #2 will not be available in this case (despite this, it should be turned on in the settings), and its settings (protocols, direction and port) will be used for the outgoing connection. And, of course, all filters configured for Server #2 will be applied to the outgoing connection.

With the settings shown at the screenshot above, the Gateway will try to connect to the TCP port 10110 at the address 192.168.1.112 (tested with Simrad GO XSR); NMEA 0183 data protocol will be used. The Gateway will try to restore the connection when it is broken. The status of the connection prints to the Debug server if it is enabled, and at the settings page (see the screenshot). In the case of UDP protocol, the Gateway will send datagrams addressed to a specified address instead of broadcast datagrams in the usual case.

This feature can be used to connect with TCP ports with NMEA 0183 data of modern chart plotters that have no physical NMEA 0183 ports. For example, Garmin chart plotters do not support NMEA 2000 messages to exchange waypoints and routes, but can do it over NMEA 0183 (but we did not tested it). It can also be used to create the bridge two NMEA 2000 segments or NMEA 0183 over Ethernet using two Gateways and TCP protocol, previously it was only possible with UDP.

Firmware update for Ethernet Gateway (v1.21), is available at Downloads section.

 

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