I have Qtvlm and the B&G Zeus 3S chartplotter. Both are great products, I am reporting my experience here, which others might find useful.
Initially, it wasn't clear to me how to setup qtvlm to receive data from the NMEA bus, as the Zeus 3S and qtvlm docs are a bit lacking in this area. After learning qtvlm only supports NMEA 0183, I purchased a NMEA 2000 to NMEA 1083 USB Gateway (YDNU-02). One consideration was to make it possible to have a cabled connection between the laptop and the NMEA bus, while being able to connect the laptop to a wifi network, such as my phone wifi hotspot.
With the YDNU-02, I was able to receive NMEA instrument data in qtvlm over the virtual serial port. I did this by configuring the NMEA connection over the virtual serial port exposed by the YDNU-02 gateway. One side of the YDNU-02 is connected to the NMEA 2000 bus, and the other side is connected to a laptop USB port. After upgrading the YDNU-02 firmware using the provided tool, I was able to see TWS, TWD, AWS, AWD, position, speed over water, and other NMEA data in qtvlm.
Then I tried to configure qtlvm to send the active waypoint to the chartplotter, but I'm still struggling to make this work. My goal was to create a route in qtvlm, then send the route or active gateway to the chartplotter and Triton displays. To achieve this, I configured a qtvlm outbound NMEA connection over the same YDNU-02 virtual serial port. I configured the Zeus 3S to accept the active waypoint over NMEA 2000 and NMEA 0183. However, this does not seem to work reliably. I've tried many combinations of options, but that does not work great.
Then I found out it's possible to configure qtvlm to
send and
receive NMEA data directly over the B&G Zeus 3S WiFi hotspot, without any additional USB or wifi gateway. This is possible because the B&G Zeus 3S chartplotter supports the following capabilities:
- Wifi hotspot.
- Sending and receiving sentences in NMEA 0183 format over TCP.
I configured QTVLM as follows:
- Laptop connects to the Zeus wifi hotspot.
- Configure inbound NMEA connections in QTVLM. First, take note of the IP address in the chartplotter. Then in qtvlm -> configuration -> "NMEA connections", configure the inbound NMEA connection over TCP. In the IP address field, enter the IP address of the B&G chartplotter. After that, QTVLM can get all of the instrument data (wind, speed, AIS, location, etc) over wifi, without any additional equipment.
- Configure outbound NMEA connections. In qtvlm -> configuration -> "NMEA connections", configure outbound NMEA connection over TCP. In the IP address field, enter the IP address of the B&G chartplotter. After that, QTVLM can send the active waypoint over wifi, and the active waypoint is created in the B&G chartplotter.
I was hoping it would be possible to send a route from qtvlm to the chartplotter directly over WiFi or NMEA, but so far I have been unable to do that. Qtvlm sends the active waypoint over NMEA, and I can see the waypoint is created in the chartplotter. However, the waypoint is not active, it seems you have to manually select "Go To" in the chartplotter. This is quite cumbersome if you have a route with multiple waypoints. I plan to spend more time troubleshooting the NMEA log to figure out if it's a qtvlm limitation, or Zeus3S limitation, or just me not understanding how to configure the system.
Despite these limitations, I am able to export the route from qtvlm to a gpx file, copy the file to a SD card, then insert the SDcard into the Zeus 3S chartplotter. Then in the chartplotter import the GPX file containing the route. This works, but it's a bit cumbersome, especially when you want to update the qtvlm route every time new grib files are received. I'm concerned about dropping the SD card while doing these manipulations, or causing salty water to get into the sdcard connections on either the laptop or chartplotter. If anyone knows how to transfer the route directly over wifi or NMEA, that would be awesome.
