Onboarding

The onboarding process walks you through a few steps that must be completed before you can start using SKipper, like connecting to your Signal K Server. The steps are detailed below. When SKipper doesn't find certain settings, it will automatically show the following "Let's get started" screen. It will show this screen each time you start, until all of the required steps are completed. Click the button to start the process.

Agreement

We've done our best to make SKipper work perfectly all the time, but, well, it's a computer program, and may have a bug or two. And operating a boat is not to be taken lightly - if you do something wrong, property could be damaged and people could be hurt, or worse. So before you get too far along with the onboarding, we need you to agree to the following. Please don't rely solely only on SKipper for navigation or critical data display. Always have an alternate source for any critical data and systems.

Installation Name

In this step you need to give your installation a name. There's only one installation of SKipper on each device, so name it something that makes sense for the device, or how or where you'll use the device. You can use one of the example names, or type in a name with the keyboard.

Units System

Select metric or imperial. (Because metric actually makes sense, it's the default. Unless your device's environment is set to EN-US or EN-UK. In that case, it defaults to imperial.) SKipper will automatically translate SI units used in SignalK into metric or imperial units. But this choice is simply setting the default for each bit of Signal K data you want to display. You can change the unit on any individual bit of data when you set it up in SKipper.

Select Signal K server

SKipper supports mDNS service discovery on every platform except the web browser version. So if your Signal K server has mDNS enabled and is setup correctly, SKipper should find your Server in a few seconds, as long as your device is on the same LAN/WAN as your Server.

If you're using the web browser version of SKipper, or if mDNS is disabled, or you want to connect to a server not on the same network, or for some reason mDNS doesn't find your server - no worries. Just use the "Type address" button and manually enter your server address.

Read-only or Authenticated?

The check box "Use Signal K in read-only mode" will allow you to connect to Signal K without authorizing the connection in the Signal K Server admin UI. This will allow to connect in read-only mode to a server that allows anonymous connection. If you want to use Signal K PUT requests for controlling Signal K enabled devices, it's required to leave this check box unchecked. Also consider if it's safe to leave your Signal K accessible without authorization, this is possible vulnerability that could lead to serious issues.

If you click on the "Type address" button you can type your server address manually. Just type http://your_server_address:port/ and hit "Connect to server". SKipper will try the address, and if it looks like a Signal K Server, it will be shown in the available list of servers.

Connecting to the Server

If there is only one server listed, select it. If more than one are listed, select the one you want. Then click on "Request Authorization", which sends an authorization request to Signal K. (If you enabled read-only mode, skip down to "After Authorization" below.)

You'll see the "Connecting to Signal K" screen. Notice the convenient "Open Signal K admin" button that will open your Signal K Admin UI in a browser window, so you can allow SKipper access.

Allow SKipper Access in Signal K

In Signal K Admin UI: log in, go to "Security", then "Access Requests". There is probably only the SKipper request, but there could be more, so select the one with the name you selected for your SKipper installation. In the "Authentication Timeout" field, type "NEVER" - this is important for SKipper to always have a functioning connection to Signal K.

Note: SKipper will gain Admin level authorization in your Signal K Server.

After Authorization

Once SKipper has access to your Signal K server, it will automatically check for stored User Pages. If you have already set up some User Pages in SKipper on another device, it will ask if you want to load them or start fresh. You can load them now, or load them later from the SKipper "Settings" menu.

Yay, You're Ready!

We know that was a lot, but we tried to make it as easy as possible. And now you're ready to start creating your own user pages in SKipper.

What now?

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