Some boats bring their instruments onto Wi-Fi through a processor made for its own app rather than a plain gateway. Offwind recognizes two of them, the Orca Core and Sailmon processors, and connects to them the same way it connects to a gateway: by itself, once you have allowed Local Network access. See Connect your instruments for the first visit.
Orca Core
Join the Wi-Fi network the Core is on and open Boat, then Connections. Offwind finds the Core by its name on the network, connects, and shows Connected automatically to Orca Core with the Core's id. There is nothing to set on the Core.
From the Core, Offwind reads:
- position, speed and course over ground, heading and rate of turn;
- heel and trim;
- apparent, true and ground wind;
- boat speed, depth, water and air temperature and air pressure;
- the battery readings the Core reports;
- bearing, distance and VMC to the active waypoint, while one is active.
Values more than ten seconds old when the Core sends them are left out, so a stale reading is never shown as current.
The Orca Core connection is read only. Offwind never sends anything to it, and output cannot be started on it.
Sailmon
A Sailmon processor sends NMEA 0183 over UDP only to an address it has been given. Offwind finds the processor by itself, but you have to point the processor's output at the phone once.
- Find it. Join the boat's Wi-Fi and open Boat, then Connections. Offwind asks the network for Sailmon processors. When one answers, a Sailmon connection appears, with the notice Connected automatically to Sailmon and a line under it saying what to set.
- Find the phone's address. In the phone's Settings, open Wi-Fi, press ⓘ next to the boat's network, and note the IP Address.
- Turn on the output. On an E4, open NavDesk. On a MAX, open Menu, then System. Turn on
NMEA 0183 UDP output, to the phone's address, port
10110. - Check. Back in Offwind, the Sailmon connection turns green and starts counting values.
Sailmon's own performance data, such as its targets and polar percentage, is in a format Sailmon does not publish, so Offwind cannot read it. Offwind works out targets and polar percentage itself from your polar and the wind and speed the Sailmon sends.
Turning an automatic connection off
Press Turn off on the notice, or swipe the connection left and press Turn off. Offwind closes it and does not open it again on this network. To stop automatic connections everywhere, turn off Connect to recognised processors automatically in the list.
Limits
- Automatic connections are remembered per network. On another boat's network, Offwind looks again from scratch.
- A Vakaros Atlas cannot be read live: Vakaros has not published its Bluetooth data protocol.
Export the session from Vakaros Connect as a
.vkxfile and import it into the log instead.