Thought I’d share something people might not have thought of; most modern day VHF radios accept NMEA data from a GPS or chart-plotter. They use that data to display location but also to transmit it in an emergency via DSC. You can wire the NMEA out from your FloatHUB right into your DSC-capable VHF, and it will pick a location fix.
There’s more info about DSC and VHF here:
This works fine when there is external GPS data provided on Data-In.
Did anyone make this work using the internal Floathub GPS?
There are a few things worth checking here:
Does your FloatHub’s internal GPS have a good fix. You can debug this by connecting a terminal program to its USB port and seeing the relevant NMEA0183 sentences. Or by connecting a charting program or just a telnet session to your FloatHub’s IP address on port 2319.
Do your VHF and FloatHub have a common ground? The Data Out from FloatHub into NMEA-in on your VHF needs a common reference/ground voltage in order to communicate.
Is there some subtlety in the GPS messages that your VHF is expecting? On its own, your FloatHub will only output RMC anf GGA sentences. If your VHF is configured to expect GLL sentences, it will not get a fix from that stream.