Configuring an NMEA-0183 Over TCP Port

The NMEA protocols used for navigation on maritime vessels can also be received over a TCP/IP connection. The NMEA0183-over-TCP port driver supports connecting to a TCP network port at a user-specified network address (usually on a Local Area Network) to receive a copy of the NMEA-0183 sentences sent by an NMEA-0183 talker. Presently, YAAC only recognizes sentences sent by GNSS navigation receivers and by the AIS-Catcher application (this latter also requires use of the AISDecoder plugin for YAAC, as the data provided by AIS-Catcher is only AIS data, not conventional GPS/GNSS navigation data).

The configuration for a NMEA-0183 over TCP connection includes:

• whether to enter the talker host's network address directly or look it up as an advertised service on the network using DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD), referred to as Bonjour by Apple.
• the network address or host name of the NMEA-0183 talker, or the service name if DNS-SD is used to locate the talker.
• the TCP port number where the talker is advertising (defaulting to the SignalK TCP port number 10110).
• whether or not YAAC should automatically try to reconnect a lost connection to the talker if the network link is broken for any reason other than the YAAC operator explicitly closing the port.