Getting Started with Signal K

In this section we will look at different ways you can install and use Signal K on your boat. There are already a number of hardware platforms and devices being used, and more are bound to follow, but we will concentrate on three recommended starter packs that we will refer to as; Basic, Advanced and Expert.

“Basic” Starter Pack

For boat owners that want to use Signal K with the minimum of effort, then the Basic Starter Pack gives you a simple way to install Signal K on your boat and start using the free apps and services that are available. The pack consists of a “Smart” Gateway that converts your existing NMEA data in to Signal K and installation just consists of wiring the gateway to your NMEA0183 and/or NMEA2000 networks and plugging the gateway in to a wireless router.

Basic Starter Pack

The most popular “smart gateway” is Digital Yacht’s iKommunicate Gateway which has three NMEA 0183 and one NMEA 2000 interfaces. It comes with some built-in Signal K web apps to get you started or you can copy other apps on to its 8GB SD card.

As your experience and confidence in Signal K grows, you can simply add a Signal K server to iKommunicate to make one of the advanced or expert packs (see below).

“Advanced” Starter Pack

For more technical minded boat owners that want to use the logging and cloud features of Signal K or who want to get involved in the “cutting edge” Signal K developments, then one of the two Advanced packs below would be the best starting point. For a larger, more powerful Signal K system, but where stability and reliability are key, then adding a Signal K server to an iKommunicate is the way to go.

Advanced Starter Pack 1

If you enjoy getting your hands dirty and want to experiment with the “cutting edge” features then a Signal K server with raw NMEA data coming from USB adaptors and gateways would be the best solution, as shown in the diagram below.

Advanced Starter Pack 2

“Expert” Starter Pack

For developers and seriously technical installations, then a larger network with multiple Signal K servers, Signal K sensors, etc. is possible and will become more common in the future as more people discover Signal K and the new functionality and benefits it can bring.

Expert Starter Pack

Installing your Signal K server

A Signal K server, is basically a webserver with the ability to read marine data and create web pages and web apps that uses this data. As a result, nearly any computer can be used as the hardware for a Signal K server, although a certain level of performance is required to avoid slow loading of web pages, etc. If you have an old laptop, then this would make a good initial test platform, although for permanent use on a yacht, a more power efficient hardware like a Raspberry Pi might be a better choice.

If you do decide to use a laptop (or desktop), then you should have no problem running all Signal K software on Windows, OS X or Linux, with Linux being the most tested and used operating system for Signal K.

Currently the most cost effective, powerful and best supported hardware platform for a Signal K server is the Raspberry Pi. Any Raspberry Pi (even the very first model) can be used but for best performance we recommend the latest RPi 3 model B+ or the new RPi 4 model B.

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B

With starter kits that include everything you need for around $50 USD, you can understand why they are so popular. There are a number of models, but the Raspberry Pi3 or Pi4 models are probably the best to go for as they include a Wi-Fi adaptor that can turn it in to a mini-wireless router, allowing you to serve up web pages to your mobile devices with no additional equipment. It runs from a 5v DC Micro USB plug (same as Android phones/tablets/Kindles), so you will need one of these USB cables plugged in to a 12v to USB type charging point on your boat to power it.

The Signal K server reference design is written in NodeJS and is referred to as the “Node Server”, which dates back to when there was a second reference design written in Java. Unfortunately, the “Java Server” is no longer maintained and all development efforts are being focused on the “Node Server”.

The “Node Server” is maintained on GitHub and a detailed “Getting Started” guide is also available - Signal K Node.js on Raspberry Pi

Interfacing to Other Devices

Most equipment on boats use NMEA 0183, NMEA 2000 or proprietary interfaces to communicate with each other. A lot of work has been done within the Signal K community to convert these different data formats in to Signal K. One option is to use an iKommunicate Gateway to convert NMEA to Signal K, but if you want to use the raw data to access proprietary sentences, PGNs, etc. then the following are recommended;

NMEA 0183

There are a number of NMEA to USB adaptors around from Actisense, Digital Yacht and Shipmodule, which allow bi-directional transfer of the NMEA 0183 Serial data (electrically similar to RS-422) and convert it in to a USB virtual COM Port when plugged in to the Signal K server.

In Linux the virtual COM Port will be seen as a device called /dev/ttyUSB0 (the number could be different if there are multiple USB-to-serial adapters connected). Linux assigns these device names automatically when the device is connected, so it could change. If you want to ensure that the device always has the same name, you will need to write a UDEV rule to specify an alias. See creating UDEV rules for details.

To verify that you have a working connection, you can use picocom or another terminal emulator to see if you are receiving data. The default baud rate for standard NMEA 0183 is 4800, whilst AIS and multiplexers use NMEA 0183(HS) at the “High Speed” 38400 baud rate.

$ picocom -b 4800 /dev/ttyUSB0

You should see NMEA 0183 sentences scrolling off the screen. To exit picocom press Ctrl-a followed by Ctrl-x.

NMEA 2000 Instruments

For NMEA 2000, there are less options. A quick search on Google will return a number of NMEA2000 to USB gateways, but the interface device is just one half of the solution. The other equally important part is the software that can read the data from the gateway and then convert it in to a format that the Signal K server understands. This software called CANboat is a suite of tools that can read and write NMEA 2000 data and convert it in to Signal K.

Currently, CANboat supports the following NMEA 2000 to USB Gateways:

and any CAN Interface that supports “SocketCAN” such as the CANable board.

Alternatively if you want to have a wireless NMEA 2000 gateway, CANboat supports these products:

Or wired Ethernet version:

CANBoat has recently been ported to JavaScript and is now part of the Signal K Node Server build, so no additional installation of CANBoat is required.

Proprietary Interfaces

There are a number of proprietary interfaces in the marine industry and by their nature, they tend to be pretty “closed” formats, that the manufacturers who create them, keep confidential. With Signal K being an open source data format, we are keen to support as many interface formats as possible and are working hard to encourage manufacturers to open up their proprietary formats.

The most common proprietary format in the marine industry is arguably SeaTalk™ which was developed by Autohelm in the 1990s and trade mark is now owned by Raymarine Limited. SeaTalk uses the same 4800 baud rate as NMEA 0183 but allowed bi-directional serial data transfer across the network down one data wire.

Even though Raymarine no longer make a SeaTalk 1 interface, there are a number of 3rd party solutions that either convert to NMEA 0183, which both of the Signal K servers can read, or convert to a raw $STALK format that allows more control and access to the SeaTalk data. One such interface that handles both types of SeaTalk conversions is the ST-NMEA interface from Digital Yacht.