Sailboat remote monitoring system

>>1103963

I would go with a raspberry pie.

I'm thinking if you use a GPS to record the point of where the anchor was dropped and then the distance or radius you can monitor the anchor drag with mathematical calcs.

There are cellular modules that you can also buy to hook up to your pie. You'll have to get a basic data plan and iirc they can cost as low as $10 a month.

Use the pie to take the info from the GPS and do your spacial calcs then your water level.

Then you'll be able to text yourself the data through the cellular/sim module with your pairs for sim card.

Easy peasy.

>>1103985

This. Depending on your investment, you might want to design some redundancy in. Maybe use two independent systems to monitor the RPis.

The RPi is a great solution because it has a large online development community and draws very little power.

>>1103963

Will your boat be within cell tower range? Everything you said you want to do is easily achievable with either Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or even an ESP8266 or ESP32.

You can get these on sparkfun, adafruit, or even ebay/amazon.

Cell shield:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13120

Liquid level detector:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10221

GPS module:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11058

>>1103985

How difficult would it be to automate this to an extent? I don't expect to be able to make my depth sounder talk to the rpi or it to know when the anchor isn't in the bow roller anymore (although that would actually be pretty easy I think) but how difficult would it be to write a program where I can punch in gps coordinates, amount of rode I've set out and the depth at low and high tide and have it do the rest of the work? Ideally I have something I can also quickly punch in at night time if I'm solo sailing and decide to just anchor for some sleep and have some alarm go off if I start drifting at night because waking up to your boat banging on shit or grounded sucks.

>>1103988
Like one rpi doing nothing but sending out a notification if the other one goes down? Not too concerned about power draw really, especially if I'm leaving the boat, the only thing drawing power (in theory..) when I'm away would be the bilge pump and ideally that's never running anyways.

>>1103989
I'm pretty sure it will, if I leave it for any time down in central or south america I'm not so sure. But then in theory I could actually afford to keep it in a marina and not have to worry so much about it. Lets just assume that it will for now.
I figured it could but I'm wondering what's best, I've got a bit of experience with arduino but none with rpi yet so I'm kind of hoping it ends up being a rpi project.

>>1103989
Thats a pretty neat liquid level, but not exactly how I want it to be measured. I'm more thinking something that sits at the top of the bilge and shoots me a text when water reaches that level, anything below I don't care so much about not to mention anything in there could be sloshed around by wakes from passing boats.

How would I sense power being sent to a device? It would be cool to sense how often and how frequently the bilge pump runs to notice a growing leak or something.

Bear with me here, I'm brainstorming as I go along

>>1103993

>redundancy

I mean to use an entirely separate duplicate system. You would have to figure out what the cost of the system is compared to the odds and cost of failure. If your boat is worth 10k and a duplicate system only cost 150usd and 10 extra dollars a month, it might be worth the extra expense.

>>1103995
Gotchya, this raises the question of using my boats power grid to power the monitoring system or using an external, dedicated one. Because after all, if a seagull runs into my wind generator and its winter with snow covering my solar panel (or someone just steals my shit) then the whole system goes down.

what voltage do rpis like to run on? 5? if thats the case then maybe the best bet would be a fully charged 6v golf cart battery seperate from the main bank thats got its own little panel for charging, that I can charge from my main bank prior to leaving the boat. If the rpi is just sending out texts when something goes wrong then I can expect it to last a good while, if it isn't really doing anything right?

>>1104000

They run on 5v, a 6v battery would work well, you could throw in a volt regulator if you are paranoid. The wattage is very low, if I remember correctly, someone said they pull 50 kwatts a year, so roughly 5 dollars a year to run. Though you would expect to use more with added modules.

I would definitely sit down and work out all the electrical calculations when you get it all finalized.

Another consideration is to have the system send out a status message at set intervals so that you know the system is running properly.

>>1104006
True, might as well get my moneys worth from the network provider lol.

Yea I definitely have a lot of work ahead of me, I'm assuming my best bet is to find tutorials for things close to what I want to achieve and modify them to suit my needs? This could be a good excuse to break out of my shell and make contact with the local hackerspace I guess

>>1104007

Well, if you only set it to send a text every day, then you shouldn't run into any issues. The text messages depend on having a cell carrier, depending on your country, text messages are almost always free or have a ridiculous (for your purpose) cap like 1000. Your biggest restriction with text messages would be your patience and electricity draw. The texts would get annoying very fast of you set them to send a message every hour, and sending a text consumes a slightly larger amount of electricity.

Alternatively, you could have it send an email to a dedicated email account every hour and then set up a text alert that notifies you if the email doesn't arrive or if the email is notifying you of an error with the system.

Long story short: there are an infinite number of ways you can program this and make it as complex as you need. You'll have to figure out what is a reasonable amount of time and money to spend to protect your investment.

File: 20161029_205105_LLS.jpg (1002KB, 2322x4128px) Image search: [Google]

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>>1103993

They make GPS units that can transmit and receive data worldwide. The services are like $100 a year and you need special hardware. If you're going to be near cell towers then go that route.

>>1103994

if(waterLevel >= maxLevel) {

send text

}

It reads the level and gives you a value. You can determine the action taken when it gives you a result.

As for the false positive from wakes you could program a checker to see if the level remains at alarm level for more than 10-20 seconds? It would be pretty easy to program.

For the frequency of bilge pump running you would probably need a real time clock to do data logging exact times and dates when the bilge pump runs.

As a fellow sailor the idea of leaving my boat unattended, at anchor, in a cove for a long period of time is just.... maddening. Even with a gps/high water/power/intrusion alarm it'd eat me alive to be away for more than a few days.

My main concern would be someone stripping her or trying to salvage her. I'd make sure my USCG doc's and fees are up to date and the title has a current address listed so no one can try to salvage. If someone does find your boat and notifies the USCG I'm not sure what to expect but it won't be good. I can't see them letting you leave it there.

Can you really not afford to put her on the hard for a few months? She probably could use new through hulls and an inspection at 40+ yo. Especially if she's a leaky teaky like I'm guessing ;)

>>1104009
Honestly I wasn't even planning on having it send updates, best case scenario is I have it set up to text me and whoever said they would "look after it" if something goes wrong.

>>1104013
Well the whole idea of this project is to make it less maddening, but I hear ya. USCG getting involved is really only an issue if it breaks free or drags into the way of things, you can't salvage a boat if its still at anchor or moored, a good amount of "moorings" are just engine blocks or other heavy shit people dropped so they could store their boat in the water for free. I've known people to make friends with folks living aboard in the water on a mooring or in a marina and just anchor their boat next to the mooring field and give their friend a key in case anything happens, and if you're boats in good order nothings going to happen. Hell, on the other side of city island from me there's about a dozen old boats just anchored, about once every 6 months one breaks free and washes ashore or sinks and still nobody does anything, and this is in nyc.

shes been on the hard for over a year, part of redoing the vital systems was replacing every thru hull and seacock with marelon, with the motor mount raised and the outboard titled I've got zero metal below the water line. Shes a Cherubini designed Hunter 30 so nothing but gloriously overbuilt fiberglass wood cored hull with no soft spots, miraculously

>>1103963
Another sailor here.

Water detector is easy so I won't get into that. Float switch or something where water completes the circuit.

Modern GPS's let you plot where the anchor is, set a circle equal to the swing on your rhode, and sound an alarm if the boat exits that circle. You could use something based on that. I second RPi/Arduino whether you hack a normal GPS to transmit or decide to make your own system.

The other ways to detect dragging (taking bearings via radar or compass and plotting them on a circle) would be harder to automate. Too bad LORAN is long dead.

But for god sake try to get/make a proper mooring if at all possible. At least get a big fucking mushroom anchor or something. Leaving a boat at anchor unattended is sketchy at best, retarded at worst. Detecting a drag will be tough. You'll be counting on unreliable electronics to do a relatively complex and vital task. And you'll be potentially relying on another human to get their ass out there and save your drifting boat in a winter storm.

Now post us a pic of your fucking boat.

>>1104034
>city island

lul fellow WLIS sailor detected

friend had an rpi set up as an opencpn/cm93 chart plotter and even though it lived inside a watertight enclosure next to the map table it died in less than a year. you might need to conformal coat the board?

also resin accelerator is your friend in the winter. we use some kinda cobalt additive for polyester roofing resin and if you don't hurry up the mix catches fire in the bucket.

>>1104041
I've got a pretty neat handheld gps I scored off an insurance claim boat at my marina, but I honestly feel like trying to modify that devices signal would be more difficult than doing it from scratch with an rpi, besides, the thing is brand new with box and is valued at around 400 so I could just pawn it and probably fund the entire project.

Funny you mention it, I've got the LORAN system that came original with the boat in storage.. the unit is physically huge as fuck though.

I've got a fuckoff heavy 45lb danforth for this exact purpose, it doesnt even fit in the chainlocker so I keep it where the inboard used to live. I have a 30lb CQR anchor for daily use, with 20 feet of 5/8th chain followed by 80 feet of 3/8th chain, and then 100ft of three strand rode.
Detecting drag is something I've seen as an option of entry level AIS systems so I imagine it can't be too difficult (or their methods of doing it are among the simpler ones) but I have little to no interest in investing in an AIS system since I'll only be doing coastal cruising. I realize relying on another human isn't much of an actual insurance policy, it's more so I know what to expect when going back to the boat. And realistically it's not going to be a case of "oh I want to go see what middle america looks like for the next 8 months" but "I want to go on bike tour for a few weeks".

>>1104043
lol wanna hear some shit about schity island marinas?

>>1104229
Why bother with all of that when Navionics is just 10 dollars? And whats conformal coating?

I don't know if there's a resin accelerator for west systems epoxy, west systems already has that characteristic of catching fire when not spread out to maximize its surface area. Besides all I've really got to do now is some work with 5200 and even then it's just resealing the fore and aft hatches joint between aluminum frame and lexan or whatever they use.

>>1104287
>I could just pawn it

Pawning doesn't get shit for money. Sell if you need money. Pawn shops make money on the interest then sell the shit which they get paid to accumulate when deadbeats abandon it.

>>1103963
Getting a warning transmission out of the GPS isn't necessarily hard. You could wire right into the alarm speaker. Alarm goes off = voltage to sound speaker triggers your transmitter.

But yeah running cheap/open source chartplotting software on an RPi with (A GOOD) GPS receiver (or two) could work really well. Add a screen on deck and you've got a nice system going. Hell you could keep building on that backbone until you've got an awesome boat full of sensors and shit. Add a 4g masttop antenna and you'll have internet when you're near shore. A lot of racers and serious cruisers actually prefer a computer to standard GPSs.

It's just a reliability issue if you're risking your boat (or potentially life) on an unstable DIY navigation/monitoring system. Don't trust any single thing 100%. Have redundancy in every system, just like you'd have two bilge pumps. Double check with paper charts if you're piloting by homemade GPS. Definitely keep that handheld unit. It's more valuable to you than anyone will pay for it. And make damn sure you have a good waterproof VHF. Preferably one in the boat plus a handheld.

>>1104287
>lol wanna hear some shit about schity island marinas?
please

I'd still worry about leaving your boat at anchor unattended. I guess your plan is sketchy by definition but you really need to be careful about this. Unfucking a worst-case-scenario could be very expensive. We lost a boat in a storm even though it was on a proper mooring. Chafed through the lines. Just glad it didn't hit some lawyer's boat or sink in a channel.

Make sure the cops/CG won't give you trouble wherever you are. You can't just leave something anchored for long periods in most places.

It's not that bad to pay for a legal, safe mooring if you're living rent-free onboard anyway.


And post some goddamn pics of your project boat!

>>1104289
Conformal coating is a waterRESISTANT coating applied to circuit boards and stuff. Usually epoxy based. Looks and functions like varnish for electronics. Definitely a good idea. You can also pot stuff in epoxy for even better waterproofing.

>>1103963
If there is a good 3g/4g signal, you can use a honeywell alarm panel for just about any condition on the boat. They have water sensors for people's water heaters and obviously door contacts and motion detectors could be modified for just about anything else. The panel has to be powered up with 16.5 vac, but it can run on 12 volt power supply through the battery backup terminals once it is running.

Just a thought, since you could diy that for about $300 and monitoring is available from $15/mo.