access external wifi

[CapnRon]

Hi & welcome to the forums.

If I understand correctly, you want to have openplotter connected to a wifi access point?  Have a look at the wifi tab -
https://sailoog.gitbooks.io/openplotter-...fi-ap.html

With a Pi3 you can either have it set up as an access point or connected to another wifi network, not both at the same time. If you untick the "enable access point" then apply after a few moments you'll be able to connect to another wifi network via the network icon on the task bar Also, if you then click refresh in the access point tab you can still VNC or SSH in using the IP address shown there. Best of both worlds is get a little wifi dongle, then you can have both

Paddy,
I guess what I am saying is that does not work for me (I did look at the wifi instructions but I cannot get them to work as you say).  I start up the system (with the enable access point) box unchecked.  I have turned off the VNC - no connection.  I move the curser over to the wireless tool in the top panel and it says - No wireless interfaces found.  WLAN0 Disassociated from OpenPlotter.  If I open up Network Preferences to configure interfaces or see SSID, there is nothing in the boxes below.  I tried the wifi scan and it shows networks, but I don't know how to set up the system to access them, so looking for a little more help.

If I click on status I get the message - missing AP! or dirver is not nl80211 up network: wlan9 dnsmasq (dhcp-server) running hostapad (AP): running networking: started ip address blank

Also,separate subject. I installed the Ultimate GPS to this Rpi using the internal serial port.  In order to get it to operate properly I had to modify the cmdline.txt and the config.txt files to switch ttyS0 and ttyAMA0 (this is what the internal now runs on).  OpenCpn find the GPS NMEA data fine using a direct connect to ttyAMA0, but your start up routine never checks that serial port during startup.  It checks ttyS0 but does not find the NMEA data there, I never see it check ttyAMA0 (at 9600 baud) to find an attached device.

thanks,
Ron