Clifford

By’eck. I couldn't create a hotspot that way, because Win8 doesn't support 'adhoc'. The Windows8 way was easy though, and might work on Win7 as well... 1. On the desktop, click on a 3-line batch file to create and start the hotspot as xyz. 2. On the networks screen, click on the wifi dongle and share its connection with xyz. The batch file includes the WINSH WLAN command. It's easy to find with google, but I'm typing this on my phone at the mo, and in fatfinger mode it's not easy to give full details.

Yes, Jambo, that's right. I could have been a bit clearer there. The wifi dongle brings in the public wifi (as a network called "wifi2" on my dongle) leaving the laptop's own wifi hardware free to be used as the hotspot xyz.

There are two different problems being discussd here. 1 How to create a wifi hotspot to connect to the internet via a mobile phone company. 2 How to connect to public wifi from inside a narrowboat. I solved 1. in the same way as lots of other people. Three's One Plan allows my tablets to do unlimited tethering via my smartphone's hotspot. Last weekend, I solved 2. as well. I can now connect to a Marina or pub's wifi, Cloud, FON, etc from inside the boat. Our marina provides a free and fast Wifi. It is broadcast from the marina pub. Boats near the pub can get it easily. Our boat is about a hundred yards away from the pub, with the sharp end pointing straight at it. If we use a tablet or laptop in the well deck, the signal is strong enough to use iplayer for instance. But INSIDE the boat the internet is very slow and keeps dropping out. My first guess at a solution was to use the laptop with a lead to an external wifi aerial. But That was a nonstarter because the laptop doesn't have an aerial socket! So I tried the USB WiFi dongle solution. I hung a dongle from the cratch board, and ran a long usb lead in through through the open door to the laptop. NOTE The dongle is NOT the type that uses a phone sim, just the ordinary dongle that you can buy to connect your PC to your home wifi. PC world and Maplin have loads of different ones. It works perfectly, the dongle just plugs and plays and (under "WiFi2") lists all the wifis it can see. This is the same list that still shows under the original laptop's "WiFi" list, but much stronger. I just picked the marina's wifi from the new list and clicked to connect. If you just want to use your laptop on public wifi, this is all you have to do! If your well deck isn't covered, or if you need to hang the dongle somewhere else to get a good signal (tv aerial?), you can put the dongle in a plastic bag. And for a permanent solution we might run the usb cable through a mushroom or a hole in the bulkhead. What about using tablets to connect to the public wifi? A bit of googling turned up something that surprised me - apparently Windows has a function to turn your LAPTOP into a wifi hotspot. I found the instructions all over the web. It took me a little while to make it work, because most of the posters seemed to have copied from each other and duplicated one wrong step. But I found the right version in the end, and the process is fairly short and almost straightforward. With the laptop still connected to the marina WiFi, I created a hotspot and called it XYZ. The tablets just connect to XYZ like a normal hotspot. But they are then connected to the internet via the marina's wifi. XYZ is so strong that the tablets can play Iplayer at the other end of the boat. Happy to explain further... (edited to say that the tablets are now connected to the internet)

Hello everyone. To introduce myself (I think this is the right place?) My name is Chris. I chose the username Clifford because that's what our boat will be called when we've got it fettled and repainted. It's been a long haul to finally getting our own boat, but it now seems that it was inevitable as soon as we had our first canal trip thirty years ago. Or perhaps before ... I started boating on a Broads holiday in the seventies. My second outing was another tupperware trip, from Athlone on the Shannon. Being thrown around by sea-sized waves on Lough Thingy (the one north of Athlone) was a bit scary only about half an hour after setting off, but not as embarrassing as ( a ) getting stuck across an arch of a bridge ( b ) running out of fuel and having to row ashore to ring the boatyard from a farmhouse (yes, kids, there was a time before mobile phones!). Mr Clifford and I moved on to sewer tubes with a week on the Lancaster in the early eighties, and never looked back. We had several hireboat trips on the Coventry, Oxford, Ashby, and SU, and a complicated week from Middlewich where we did an-out and-back on every canal radiating from there. We've now had nine happy years as part owners. It was painful enough handing the boat over to the next owner after the first trip (you KNOW you are only a part-owner, but when you are on the boat it doesn't FEEL like it). But after every trip it gets worse, and it wasn't long before we knew we'd have to get our own. We finally got round to doing something about it last autumn. It started with "just looking" , but you know how that turns out.... I'm very, very grateful to the regular contributors on here. I've been lurking for a long time, and learned so much that was vital to think about when doing the rounds of the boatyards. "Fortune favours the prepared mind", so when the right boat found us, we were able to go for it with at least some confidence that we had considered the practicalities sufficiently to avoid a clunker. The survey (thanks in particular for THAT bit of advice) backed up our feelings and that was that. Hurrah! Trojan is a 1997 55ft Mike Heyward (sp?) all-small-porthole semitrad with a nearly-new Isuzu 43. It's a slghtly old-fashioned fitout (rather dark-varnished ply) that we fell in love with straight away. It's the same age as our shared boat, so I think it's a bit of liking what you know. Most of the newer boats we looked at seemed to us rather clone-y in their light-oak shiny-surfaced "nice"-ness - more Apartmenty than Boaty. I've come out of the lurking shadows for three reasons. First, because after getting so much help in choosing our boat, it felt right to contribute some of our own experience that might help those coming along after us. Second, because now we've got a hole in the water to throw money into, there will be plenty of things I'll need to ask for advice on. Third, simply because it simply feels like a community that I'd like to get more involved with. Thanks again everyone. I know you kindly tell new members there's no such thing as a stupid question, I'll try not to treat that as a challenge! Chris (and Mr Clifford), nb Trojan.