question

If we could select USB or Network and if network was chosen then enter an IP/hostname, port number (default 10110?) and type (tcp/udp) and just use NMEA as source, that should not be to hard to implement I would guess. Would be a nice addition. Source could then be a ShipModul Miniplex for example.

If I look at the Teltonika wiki, it can send the GPS data to a server but not function as a server itself (or I'm misreading). Then we would need gpsd inside venusos

https://wiki.teltonika.lt/view/GPS

I am also interested to see if anyone has been able to configure an IP based NMEA device! I have a Verizon MiFi 7730L which also sends raw NMEA text data over port 11010. When using telnet to this port, I am able to see the raw NMEA data. I have been able to use socat to manipulate the stream as an attached device, but I am without a clue on how the Venus system understands a GPS device is connected. If there was a way to just input the IP and Port settings that would be a very cool feature! For now, I'll keep poking around with socat and try to learn more about how Venus detects and parses GPS data.

I'm also interested. We are on a sailboat, and while it's easy to add a GPS device, we already have 4 GPS sources available over IP or NMEA. It would be great to be able to have venus subscribe to a tcp stream, signalk or something similar.

Any news on this?

Any News here? Iam also Watching for pulling the GPS Coordinates via RUTX12 Router to the Cerbo. Greetz!

Hi all, we won't be working on this ourselves anytime soon.

For anyone of you wanting to spend time on this, I suggest two possible routes to look into:

1. Make a python (or other language) script that takes the data from TCP and puts it on the D-Bus.

2. Install our Venus OS Large, which includes SignalK, and then see if either the signalk-venus-plugin supports pushing gps info from signalk to venus, or somewhere in SignalK make something that takes data from TCP and publishes it on N2K, where then Venus OS will pick it up automatically - as long as published on N2K correctly ofcourse.

Another quick option is too purchase a cheap USB GPS module and plug it directly into the Venus GX. This will then deliver GPS directly into the VenusOS!

Hi,

Just as a possible solution.

I have the RUTX11 (forward the NMEA sentences via UDP or provide the position via ModBus) and a Cerbo GX.

I wrote a python script which pulls the data from the RUTX via ModBus and puts it on the dbus.

But this is not even necessary! (at least as soon as Teltonika fixes the issue that the UDP messages are sent multiple times)

The simplest way is to redirect the UDP frames to a serial interface.

So I just created a service which starts socat and opens the UDP port and redirects the traffic to /dev/ttyUDP0

socat UDP-RECV:8500 pty,link=/dev/ttyUDP0,raw,nonblock,echo=0,b115200

And another service which starts gpsdbus

/opt/victronenergy/gps-dbus/gps_dbus -s /dev/ttyUDP0 -b 115200 -t 0

Best Regards

Joachim

@Gootch Great solution...

A bit of tweaking on the forwarding cache and I seem to only be sending 1 message.

Have to remember this for the future as it is a great way of getting GPS data into the device simply.

Hi @Bathnm,

yes it's simple and it seems to work reliable.
I have now also figured out a solution to distribute it across the whole network as there might be additional receiver of the position.

I added also a service to my Teltonika RUTX11 which sent the position as Multicast.
I just configured the NMEA forwarding to localhost 127.0.0.1 and added a service

socat UDP-RECV:8500 UDP4-DATAGRAM:192.168.9.255:6666,broadcast,range=192.168.9.0/24

which opens the local port and put it on the multicast address.

This by the way also fixe my issue with multiple messages sent by the RUTX11. Now I get every second one NMEA Sentence (for the selected ones) on Port 6666 as multicast.

Lowers the CPU load on the VenusOs by a lot.

And every Linux device in the network has now a GPS Position by creating a virtual serial port as described in my last answer.

Regards Joachim

All,

I added the following lines to /data/rc.local. Works fine.

#
# get GPS from router
#
/usr/bin/socat UDP-RECV:8500 pty,link=/dev/ttyUDP8500,raw,nonblock,echo=0,b115200 &
while [ `ps|grep gps_dbus|grep -v grep|wc -l` -eq 0 ]
do
  sleep 1
  /opt/victronenergy/gps-dbus/gps_dbus -s /dev/ttyUDP8500 -b 115200 -t 0 &
done

Cheers, luphi

@Gootch , @luphi , could you explain it in more detail?

i have got a RUT955 and would like to share the GPS signal with the Cerbo GX and my HomeAssistant. Therefore, i think your solution is perfect.

is this correct:

1. Forward NMEA to localhost 127.0.0.1 in the RUT955 and add the service:

socat UDP-RECV:8500 UDP4-DATAGRAM:192.168.9.255:6666,broadcast,range=192.168.9.0/24

2. Copy the following lines to the end of Cerbo's "/data/rcS.local"

```

#

# get GPS from router

#

/usr/bin/socat UDP-RECV:8500 pty,link=/dev/ttyUDP8500,raw,nonblock,echo=0,b115200 &

while [ `ps|grep gps_dbus|grep -v grep|wc -l` -eq 0 ]

do

sleep 1

/opt/victronenergy/gps-dbus/gps_dbus -s /dev/ttyUDP8500 -b 115200 -t 0 &

done

```

3. Add the sk-ups plugin in the Signalk Server, if you need the GPS position for it

Questions:

1. How do i setup a service in the RUT955?
2. i can't find the "sk-ups"-plugin

@CzarofAK, regarding your 2nd question. I have a RUTX11, and under system, there is a customs script. I pasted this into it

socat UDP-RECV:8500 UDP4-DATAGRAM:x.x.x.255:6666,broadcast,range=x.x.x.0/24 &

On every reboot this command is run.

Hi @CzarofAK ,

I'm not the linux expert on services and as each distribution has it's own init daemon makes things not simpler.

So on the VenusOs I added the two calls in two run scripts as they are supervised and if a process somehow crashes it will be restarted.

I did the similar thing on the RUTX by adding a script to the init.d folder and also added the respawn parameter.

#!/bin/sh /etc/rc.common

USE_PROCD=1
START=99

start_service() {
         procd_open_instance [instance_name]
         procd_set_param command socat UDP-RECV:8500 UDP4-DATAGRAM:192.168.x.255:6666,broadcast,range=192.168.x.0/24
         
         procd_set_param respawn ${respawn_threshold:-60} ${respawn_timeout:-5} ${respawn_retry:-5}

}

you need to start the service and enable the service for autostart via the cli.

RUTOS is a openwrt fork so the openwrt documentation helps a lot in addition to the teltonika one.

I cannot help with SignalK as I don't use it.

Regards Joachim

Thanks so much to all the posters in this thread to make this happen. Works amazing using socat!

It took me way longer than it should've done to get working since I didn't change the default NMEA forwarding from TCP to UDP and assumed I'd messed up something when editing over SSH instead but got there in the end.

EDIT: FIXED! I forgot to do a chmod 755 on my rc.local file. Once I did that it startups up perfectly!

Hello all. I just purchased an RUTX11. I was able to get this working with the following settings but I'm having issues (see below). There is not startup script in the router as I have nothing else on the network that is going to use GPS. The second photo I'm just pointing the NMEA forwarding directly to the GX (192.168.1.146 is my GX) :

but sadly it won't start automatically. I put the following in my rc.local:

#
# get GPS from router
#
/usr/bin/socat UDP-RECV:8500 pty,link=/dev/ttyUDPRUTX11,raw,nonblock,echo=0,b115200 &
 
while [ `ps|grep gps_dbus|grep -v grep|wc -l` -eq 0 ]
do
sleep 1
/opt/victronenergy/gps-dbus/gps_dbus -s /dev/ttyUDPRUTX11 -b 115200 -t 0 
done &
 
 
exit 0

If I reboot the GX, even with this in the RC.local, it won't be there at startup. I have to SSH in and manually run rc.local then it shows up and works great until the next reboot.

Then after I run rc.local:

I tried to modify the script to have a sleep 30 but that still doesn't work. Any ideas? Running 2.92 on a raspberry pi. I have a cerbo, but for all my testing I've been using this pi.

Thanks a lot to everybody here.. this was very helpful. I use my RUTX11 to provide GPS to my NMEA2000 Network and in addition wanted to use this GPS for Cerbo GX.

To prevent sending multiple messages I used two different ports (8500 and 8501)

It took some time to read the whole thread so I want to summarize what I did.

RUTX11 GPS Settings

Hostname: IP of RUTX11
Protocol: UDP
Port: 8501

RUTX11 Startup Script:

# Put your custom commands here that should be executed once
# the system init finished. By default this file does nothing.
socat UDP4-RECV:8501 UDP4-DATAGRAM:192.168.1.255:8500,broadcast,range=192.168.1.0/24 &
exit 0

Venus GX:

create/edit file :

nano /data/rcS.local

insert:

# get GPS from router

/usr/bin/socat UDP4-RECV:8500 pty,link=/dev/ttyRUTX11,raw,nonblock,echo=0,b115200 &

while [ `ps|grep gps_dbus|grep -v grep|wc -l` -eq 0 ]
do
sleep 1
/opt/victronenergy/gps-dbus/gps_dbus -s /dev/ttyRUTX11 -b 115200 -t 0
done &

exit 0

set permissions:

chmod 755 /data/rcS.local

I just wanted to add that using the above info I was able to easily setup my Cerbo to ingest GPS data from my Pepwave router. Pepwave has a dedicated page for GPS config in their Advanced section: