Idle Monday morning musing - Maintenance Log book

[Minerva]

Over the last few decades of boat ownership, when a system has been upgraded / installed there has been no record of the wiring diagram used in the installation, the date of installation or whatnot - only a manual stuffed into now burgeoning few plastic folders and a lot of working out what the previous owners were thinking when they installed a particular bit of kit.

Over the next few years I'll likely be wanting to upgrade a lot of these systems (batteries, chargers, solar, instruments & hot water) on board.

I think I'd like to keep a record of the wiring diagrams used for the installation of these, have searchable PDF's for all the manuals and perhaps photos of the actual install / build process. It would be simple enough to keep these all saved locally on a computer hard drive, but hard drives and boats probably not the best combination.

Question therefore is, is anyone using any apps or programs to keep this information which is both stored in the cloud / saved offline locally for when we don't have internet access?

Thanks

 

[Refueler]

I use Paint to create a schematic ... then print and keep in loose leaf binder.

ie attached relay to auto control my power hungry coolbox.



But to be honest - after a while you drift into the 'cannot be arsed to draw another' ...

 

[neil_s]

I use a spreadsheet workbook - it now has over 20 sheets!

 

[GHA]

Over the last few decades of boat ownership, when a system has been upgraded / installed there has been no record of the wiring diagram used in the installation, the date of installation or whatnot - only a manual stuffed into now burgeoning few plastic folders and a lot of working out what the previous owners were thinking when they installed a particular bit of kit.

Over the next few years I'll likely be wanting to upgrade a lot of these systems (batteries, chargers, solar, instruments & hot water) on board.

I think I'd like to keep a record of the wiring diagrams used for the installation of these, have searchable PDF's for all the manuals and perhaps photos of the actual install / build process. It would be simple enough to keep these all saved locally on a computer hard drive, but hard drives and boats probably not the best combination.

Question therefore is, is anyone using any apps or programs to keep this information which is both stored in the cloud / saved offline locally for when we don't have internet access?

Thanks

I use evernote amongst other offerings. Anything & everything goes in there so it's quickly findable again. Even smaller fixing things gets its own note now. Has ocr so searches text inside images as well. Though just checked, free version isn't as all singing as it once was. I'm on personal.
Mobile with good camera uploading to Google photos extremely useful as well.

Google offers 15Gb free drive storage now per account so simple to use the drive app to back up any folders you want, works seamlessly in the background, you don't know it's there. 15gb not enough create another account.

 

[Sandy]

I created a series of word processed files. Each topic is a seperate file so that when I need to add text or re-print a section I don't need to print the whole lot. The files are saved as PDFs, printed and copied to several devices.

I'd love access to a free diagramming tool, everything I've seen has a steep learning curve and I want to go sailing.

 

[billyfish]

Paper and pencil for me

 

[colind3782]

I use a spreadsheet workbook - it now has over 20 sheets!

So do I!