Hi, I’m just setting up my blueboat for the first time and have been going through the software set up (instructions are great!)
All was going well until I reached the reboot step after changing the antenna gains.
After running the reboot, I cannot access any of the IPs via my web browser
I have tried
192.168.2.4
192.168.2.3
192.168.2.2
Here is a video of what I’m looking at
Boat is turned on and has a slow flashing light.
Base station is turned on with full green bars on the battery. There is a quiet infrequent but regular single then double beep.
Connection from base station to my laptop is via USBc
Hi @kejoyce -
Welcome to the forums!
Sorry for the issue. It seems like something is wrong with your radio post updating those gain settings. Can you share which radio you were configuring when you lost connection?
It seems that the network interface configured, and then was up when you were recording your video (neat tool by the way!), but you didn’t refresh the webpages after the connection seemed to finish setting up…
You could open a command prompt and run “ping 192.168.2.3” to verify your connection to the base station, and “ping 192.168.2.4” to verify your connection to the BlueBoat radio (only possible if you’re connected to base station.)
If you hear a beep, followed by a double beep, that indicates the radio starting up, and finishing the boot up sequence. If when left plugged in, you hear this at a regular interval, then some aspect of the firmware may have been configured incorrectly, or the power connection is intermittent (double check the ethernet cable - this is more likely on the BlueBoat side) If all else fails, the radio can be recovered using the reset button and by loading the default settings with a configuration file - hopefully that won’t be necessary as it is a mild hassle.
If the issue is with the BaseStation, opening it and verifying the PCB switch is set correctly per technical bulletin 10 is worth doing, if it is within the affected order period - unlikely if the BlueBoat is from 2024.
It seems you’re running windows - you could install winbox, as this software will connect to the mikrotik even if it has an invalid IP. Double checking your USB connection / cable to make sure it’s not the reason from the reboots could help too.
I hope some aspect of that solves your issue! Let us know what you encounter
Hi Tony,
Thanks so much for getting back to me. Have attached a pic of the base station I’m using where I think I caused the error. I did try refreshing the browser several times, powered everything down and then on again etc.
I’ll double check the cables etc in the morn and run the cmd prompt as well - it’s gone 10pm for me now in northern Australia.
If I do need to do a reset do you have a guide for that? I was feeling something like that might be required My guess it’s something with the base station rather than the boat itself as that’s the reboot step where I lost connection - I assume there is a factory reset for that too?
Hi @kejoyce -
Does the BaseStation power up and show a fully charged battery? If it’s not well charged, that could be the issue… (press center button when connected via USB C to charge)
We have instructions on flashing the radios from the factory default configuration, yes. Mikrotik_programming.zip (1.4 MB)
I’m not sure if we’ve documented how to reset the radio - you’d take the 6 bolts from the underside of the box off, and slide off the rubber bumpers on both sides. You’d then get a good poking device, like a skewer or pen, and hold the reset button while connecting power, releasing when you see lights on the radio turn on. The reset button is located next to the ethernet hack on the circular end of the unit. From there, you should be able to discover the radio in winbox, and follow the instructions in that zip file to configure the BaseStation radio.
Thanks Tony - yes the base station is at full bars charge.
Is there a chance that it’s the base station that needs to be reset rather than the radio? That was the one that I was making the change to when the problem occurred. If so, how do I do that?
Cheers,
Karen
Hi @kejoyce -
To clarify - I am talking about the base station - it contains a mikrotik radio inside of it! That’s what you were modifying, the radio settings. There are no other devices in the BaseStation that can be reset - just the charge controller (which should have its switch set to 12V)
Ping comes back with ‘destination host unreachable’.
I then removed the USBc cable and re-followed the instructions to connect the base station to my computer via wifi. But it doesn’t come up in the wifi connection options at all. I had tried the wifi connection route yesterday before the reboot just to play with an alternative to the cable and it had worked fine.
Hi @kejoyce -
No further insight, it seems like the radio isn’t turning on, or at least not for long enough to setup a WiFi network or connect via USB to Ethernet.
Go ahead an open the BaseStation - verify the position of the 5v/12v switch, and make sure the radio is securely plugged in - it is the long beige cylinder shaped device.
If there are no lights on the radio with the BaseStation powered up, then you may have a faulty radio or some other power issue.
Otherwise, go ahead and reset the radio with a pointy object as described above, and connect to it via winbox to finish configuring it.
I’m replying to this thread as I’ve been facing similar issues with my BlueBoat radio setup.
Initially, my radio was working, though I frequently experienced signal loss — around 3 disconnections per 10 minutes for a few months. I was able to connect to 192.168.2.4 on my computer. It wasn’t a critical issue since I primarily relied on Starlink for communication. However, the radio link suddenly got a lot worse and I can’t use my boat. I can never connect to 192.168.2.4.
I followed the MikroTik troubleshooting steps from the BlueBoat documentation by installing both the BaseStation_Config_RevC.rsc and BlueBoat_Config_RevC.rsc files. At the last step of the procedure, when I tried to connect to the BaseStation Wi-Fi from the BlueBoat router in Winbox, the connection would always drop after a few seconds — exactly like the signal drop I had experienced before.
I then proceeded with the Netinstall process on both routers (BaseStation and BlueBoat). This process : Netinstall - RouterOS - MikroTik Documentation
The process was very challenging because Winbox kept crashing systematically every 5 seconds only when configuring the BaseStation router, even when trying different versions of Winbox. It stopped when i used Winbox 4.0 to finish setting up. However, there were no crashes at all with the BlueBoat router.
Here’s the full sequence of what I tried. I have screenshots of the Winbox configurations at each step as well as a screen recording showing the constant Wi-Fi drop :
Both routers on RouterOS 7.18.1 (Stable) — Frequent signal drops when connecting to the BaseStation Wi-Fi from the BlueBoat router in Winbox.
Hi @renanm -
Sorry for the issue! It seems like your BlueBoat radio may have power issues- can you confirm the behavior of the LEDs on the side of the radio in the boat when the disconnections are happening? Using a multimeter to check the voltage between the black and red wire that are broken out from the Ethernet wire harness, at the fuse board, would also be a good troubleshooting step.
Verifying your BaseStation switch is set to 12V and not 5V is another good thing to check.
Can other devices, like your laptop or phone, connect to the BaseStation and remain connected?
Have the radios been operated with the antennas not attached at any point?
If not, and the issue persists, please reach out via our support form to further troubleshoot and potentially get replacement hardware. Thanks!
Hi,
Upon further inspection, I mistakenly put the wrong password in winbox to connect to the base station wifi (blueboat instead of BaseStation). I can connect now properly (connected to ess). I still can’t connect using the IP address though, do you know why ?
I thus can’t access http://192.168.2.2/ ie blueos.local either.
BaseStation switch is 12V, the multimeter gives me 15.6V. When the boat router is connected to the wifi (only the first LED blinks regularly, all other leds are green) , when it is trying to connect (same thing for the first LED, other LEDs are off)
Thanks !
Hi @renanm -
How are you connecting to the BaseStation AP network? For either WiFi or USB, you need to configure the network adapter used to have the right static IP - have you done this? I would suspect the subnet mask is set incorrectly if you can’t reach 192.168.2.3 or .2.4, if the radios aren’t working you won’t reach BlueOS at .2.2 …
The BlueBoat radio needs to be re-connected to the Pi after setting up the connection to the BaseStation as well…
Hi,
To give a quick update, I managed to get everything working. I am not entirely sure why the radios where acting strangely as some versions of the routerOS paired with some versions of Winbox made everything crash.
The issue with the pi was solved by reflashing blueOS directly through the SD card.
Thank you very much for your help !
My guess it’s something with the base station rather than the boat itself as that’s the reboot step where I lost connection - I assume there is a factory reset for that too?
