Accessing your boat remotely is a common desire. Most people can access their home remotely, so it seems like it should be just as easy for your boat. But there are some limitations with the types of connectivity that most boaters have that make it a bit more challenging.
Hi Steve, which Peplink router are you using at home? Do you have a cellular modem or router on your boat for internet connectivity?
Hi there,
My home is my boat 
so that may add some complexity here. I have a land-based location where I have some routers installed at a relatives house for testing larger scale WAN connections.
My current internet setup can be found here: Aruna's internet setup which has multiple different internet sources including cellular, Starlink, and the like.
ahh, is there a Peplink router you would recommend if that one is too much. We are going to be using it to work from boat some of the time and monitor the boat remotely some of the time. Do you think the dual cellular is super important? The BR1 is a bit more reasonable. We were hoping to stay in the $1,000 price range.
btw we will be sailing coastal for the most part initially. We do have a Starlink for offshore but we’re fairly new to ocean sailing because we recently bought a catamaran in Virginia. Our sailing has been largely in the Great Lakes so we’re just navigating all this now.
…also we are thinking about using nmea2000 devices to monitor (ie bilge, battery etc), possibly with Actisense or some other device which allows us to access the info through wifi when possible and cellular when not. I have seen some of your information on remotely accessing boat systems but really have to study it a bit more.
The BR1 Pro 5G is a good choice if you want redundancy (I highly recommend it) between Starlink and cellular. There are some other 3rd party routers that are good too - I have a couple of reviews that will be coming out soon on several that I like.
I do provide consulting services where I help folks figure out use cases, equipment lists, or full designs for some of the things you’re talking about. You can also just schedule a 30 minute call (voice/video) if you prefer that way as well.
Great thanks, we bought the BR1 Pro 5G yesterday and are looking for a cellular plan. I have read some of your discussions where you recommend Google Fi and some others. I noticed some companies offer IoT sims. Does it matter if it is an IoT sim or just a regular data sim. We will only be using data. Also live in Canada and the catamaran is in the US but we also plan to travel to the Caribbean. Just wondering if you have any experience with “global” or “travel” type data providers.
Lots of options if you are purchasing SIMs in country. Varies by country. The more common way with newer routers is using eSIMs which can be activated without a physical SIM and allow providers to sell you all sorts of easy to activate plans. IoT SIMs are likely going to be limited in terms of throughput for month as they’re meant for much lower bandwidth usage.