# GCS Primary IP when in Station Mode

Source: https://forum.modalai.com/topic/4042/gcs-primary-ip-when-in-station-mode
Category: General Questions (https://forum.modalai.com/category/2/general-questions)
Posted: 2024-12-18 23:44:00 UTC by griffin
Replies: 3 · Views: 825

## griffin · 2024-12-18 23:44:00 UTC

Hey all,

I am trying to find the primary GCS IP when the wifi is set to station mode. As per [this diagram](https://docs.modalai.com/images/voxl-sdk/voxl-mavlink-server-diagram-sdsp-mode.png) it is usually `192.168.8.10` when in `softap` mode and I am able to  see the traffic via 
```bash
sudo tcpdump -n -i any udp port 14550
```
However, when I setup the drone in `station` mode I do not see any traffic over 14550 and cannot find which IP address to send mavlink messages over. The instructions for connecting to QGC over 4G/5G do not clarify how the GCS IP address is specified in the case where both GCS and drone are connected to the same network.

Obviously I can find the drones ip via `ifconfig`

thanks for the help,
Griffin

P.S. running `grep -r "192.168.8.10" .` consistently crashes the drone

## Reply by tom (ModalAI staff) · 2024-12-19 00:52:37 UTC

@griffin It should just be the IP of your PC on the network. How to find the IP varies on your OS

## Reply by griffin · 2024-12-19 19:58:39 UTC (in reply to tom)

@tom thanks, that helped me get the drone and GCS connected over wifi!
Turns out I was slightly confused about exactly what was happening when I specified the mavlink connection ip.

Getting everything to talk correctly required editing `/etc/modalai/voxl-mavlink-server.conf` s.t. the `primary_static_gcs_ip` was my PC's address. Is there any way to automate this process so that I don't have to continually ssh into the drone to update the IP? Obviously the nuclear option is to assign everything fixed IP addresses.

Sorry for my lack of networking knowledge and thanks for the help,
Griffin

## Reply by tom (ModalAI staff) · 2024-12-19 22:00:36 UTC (in reply to griffin)

@griffin Unless you have your network setup to manually cycle IP addresses every so often then your PC's IP address should stay the same. They're usually logged by mac address