Potential YAPP - Anchor Rode Counter

A

Andrew G

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It's not unusual for me to anchor in 25m of water (65m chain plus 50m nylon rope). I have an electric windlass with both deck-mounted and cockpit-mounted up/down switches (I don't like powering down because it flattens the anchor battery just before turning off the engine and the solar powerhouse goes down). I have 10m marks on the chain but what I would really like is a rode counter with a readout in the cockit (can be wired) that can cope with power up/down and freefall (down . . ). I'm happy to drill and epoxy magnets on the gypsie - any YAPPers out there have any ideas for the rest of it? (the commercial products are just too expensive)?

Cheers, Andrew
 
I would be interested if anyone comes up with a design, My gypsy drops 36cm of chain per revolution, so it would not matter much if it just treated it as 3 revolutions per metre.
 
I've been part way through an electromechanical version of one of these for some time now. I bought a small RS up/down counter module (can't remember the reference no. and it's on the boat). 1/3 of a rev of my gypsy is about 0.1m of chain so my idea is to count 3 pulses per rev. and divide the answer by 10 either mentally or with the aid of a painted decimal point. My thought was to use windlass motor voltage via a reed switch or more up to date equivalent: I have a permanent magnet motor so polarity is direction dependent, then use steering diodes to feed the increment / decrement terminals of the counter. The module has a zeroing button which would be handy for initial set up or after sorting out fankles.

Having discovered that self adhesive magnets rust in the course of a season, the next step is to acquire 3 small bar magnets and set them into drilled holes in the gypsy fully embedded in epoxy.
 
nigelmercier said:
My design doesn't use magnets: it looks for the manual lever hole on the drum.
Click to expand...

Very cunning. I used to use energy monitoring gadgets that picked up light reflected from an electric meter disc - they were a right pig to set up.

I'd be interested in your design; if I could use something better than magnetic pick up I would. My emergency manual handle has three pegs which fit into holes, so again 0.1m of chain per hole...
 
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