Low power Boat Monitoring YAPP

[gregcope]

Hi All,

Been spending way too long developing a remote boat monitoring solution. It is designed to be very low power (20ma ish ...) and to watch your boat on a mooring/anchorage.

It can;

- Set a mooring/anchor alarm
- Wakes up (configurable sleep time) to run checks (every N mins - 60 seems good to me)
- Check a bilge switch
- Check House battery voltage
- Alerts via SMS (inc Google Maps link if Anchor alarm fires)
- Configurable via SMS
- Has a reserve battery to run from if house batteries get low so that it does not drain them

Code / instructions here; https://github.com/gregcope/piboatmon

Picture of the Mk1a development board ... still waiting for some bits to arrive to make the Production version, but it is mostly dev complete. Tomorrow I aim to take it to work to test the reserve battery and anchor monitoring (whilst moving on the train )

View attachment 47756

The production version is going to be based on a Raspberry PI model A+ which is allot smaller, as well as a serial port (USB) attached modem board and few other tweaks.

Why?

- I want to know my boat bilges are not filling with rain whilst on the mooring
- If the boat takes the mooring for a walkabout I would like to know (happens at the club, rarely)
- Anchor Alarm for when we are anchoring
- I want to know my house batteries are Ok when I am not around (so that I can take a charger/charged battery ...)
- Check yet to be brought solar panels are actually charging
- When the boat moves have a running log (e.g Being brought out of the water)
- Low power so that I do not need to worry about flattening batteries
- Platform for a 4G boat WIFI router if I get round to it ...
- Wanted to learn more about the Raspberry PI GPIO hardware interfacing, GPS and Python.

 

[sarabande]

sounds excellent, and it must be quite a challenge getting all those clever electro-gnomes inside to work properly.


Put me down for a production model please. Where to send money ?


Oh, and a subsidiary program to make bacon sandwiches would be useful

 

[GHA]

 

[gregcope]

sounds excellent, and it must be quite a challenge getting all those clever electro-gnomes inside to work properly.


Put me down for a production model please. Where to send money ?


Oh, and a subsidiary program to make bacon sandwiches would be useful

Bacon do-able - as I can power a relay (via SMS commands) to some sort of electric cooker ...

Getting it working is less of a challenge than keeping it working reliably. Bit reluctant to make ones for others as I have no idea on the longevity of some components eg.

- How will the Pi/GPS/Modem survive so many power cycles?
- How long will the GPS battery (required to get a fast fix) or reserve battery last?
- How long will the whole lot last in a marine environment?

 

[gregcope]

Testing by taking it into work went well;

- Found a few bugs (sorted) around setting the anchor alarm
- Some lovely anchor alarm SMS messages when I was 60000M from where it was set
- Google Maps links work well
- Does not work in a tunnel (go figure!)
- Slight bug when it cannot get a GPS fix - need to do slightly more testing here where the GPS hardware starts/is working, but cannot get a fix
- 9v battery works for around 12 iterations before the 3G sucks it dry - the other modem, and PI Model A+ should work longer better