Bilge Watch

[pmagowan]

I guess you would need a system with an LED indicating the position of each sensor, and a latch to retain which one came on first in the event of a catastrophe.

I was initially thinking about that but am now moving more towards the idea of a raspberry pi to monitor things and display the results on a multifunction display. I may put in an led indicator also, perhaps on a nice panel with an image of the boat on it but this would be integrated with nag lights etc.

 

[salar]

..... integrated with nag lights etc.

I don't need one of those, I can tell from the look on her face what's coming.

 

[pmagowan]

I don't need one of those, I can tell from the look on her face what's coming.

 

[winsbury]

reversing the thread drift ... we have one, love it, cheap as chips sourced via fleabay but worth full price in any case, its linked to our gsm alarm so I should get a text message if the boat starts taking on water while we are away which hopefully will give us time to get someone out to the mooring to investigate before she sinks. Current draw is negiligible, we have wind and solar so stay topped up anyway.

 

[nimbusgb]

Surely even 'watertight' compartments should/will have small drain or limber holes to allow condensation, jacket drips, small leaks or rain incursion to drain down to the main bilge? Making monitoring 8 pumps pretty pointless and if your boat is drastically holed while you are not there then a 'dumb' monitor is useless to you. While you are aboard having a compartment float switch monitor might be an advantage as suggested, with a memory of the sequence of events, ie which compartment flooded first. I'm not convinced of that though, just because one compartment detected water first may not mean that it is the worst breached one!

A system that only monitors and counts time/activations is less than ideal as you only get to find out if you have a problem when returning to the boat. Ideally something that alerts you at home when there is problem is far more desirable.

 

[Trundlebug]

A system that only monitors and counts time/activations is less than ideal as you only get to find out if you have a problem when returning to the boat. Ideally something that alerts you at home when there is problem is far more desirable.

That's where linking it to a gsm alarm as well comes in.

 

[winsbury]

That's where linking it to a gsm alarm as well comes in.

+1, exactly what we have.

Its also useful to see if it gets activated (or the count increases ) while cruising as it alerts to a new (or worsening) leak that might not get noticed otherwise, its a simple task to add it to the checks to do while writing up the log.

Dont forget that you can use the other 7 connections to monitor anything that gets switched on-off, connect it to the water pump to monitor for taps left open for longer than desired for example, or the gas alarm to warn of a gas build up while away from the boat; you can probably think of others.

In any case I'd much rather have a device installed that has more connections than I'm ever likely to need than not enough and doubt that these extra circuits added more than a few pennies to the cost of the device given that the sensing chip is almost certainly an off the shelf 8-bit logic chip ( ie: with 8 binary inputs.)