On adding modern telemetry to old boats.
It’s raining buckets in the San Juan Islands right now. Not so in my garden in San Francisco, where rain would be welcomed like a visiting dignitary. But from where I sit, I can see both wan California winter sunlight and that the bilge pump in S/V Nobody, lying near the Canadian border, is not running – and that the batteries are charged, and that no one has been aboard today.
In the 80s, when my boat was built, boat electronics were at the same enthusiastic but unskilled level as music videos. Today, a modern boat presents information about its systems in an informational stream that adheres to a set of standards, making it interchangeable and malleable. We are used to, at this point, being able to configure helm instruments to show true or apparent wind, compass course, etc. The same configurable screens can, on many boats, show cross-track error, fuel gauges, or tank capacity.
It’s easy to say that this is ‘too much’ technology and not be wrong. Every system on a boat is a liability, and a mortgage on your future time in dealing with its failure. That said, some systems are still worth adopting. Imagine sailing without a roller furler. Yes, they can fail in a way that a hank-on sail cannot… but my are they nice.
So, de gustibus, but there are a few reasons that a modern instrumentation system might make it ‘over the line’ and justify its complexity:
Installation. There’s simplicity to be gained in turning a dozen individual wires, each taking up space and prone to chafe and corrosion, into one wire - or even zero wires - via a well-defined standard. Pull out a dozen cables, each supposedly color-coded and each running the length of the boat from devices to dials, and replace it with a simple bus.
Recordkeeping. No more relying on faulty memory, and whichever side of the ‘paranoia/wishful thinking’ coin you flipped in the genetic lottery. Once data is recorded, historical records become easy to consult – and they’re very valuable:
Remote Access! It’s raining. Want to drive down to the boat to see if the bilge pump is running more (or less) than historically?
Plus, of course, it’s just fun. And doing it DIY is enormously more powerful, and cheaper, than spending bazillions on the admittedly gorgeous B&G gear that can do it all.
This would be plenty, but it’s fairly easy to add internet to support remote monitoring and automation of things like logging trips to triplogger.
Your regular consumer-level LTE modems or ‘mifi’-style objects, typically sold by your provider and meant to be portable, won’t do. They’re hard to power, not meant to be left on full-time, can’t be attached via a single cable.
I settled on a CAT12 device by Taktikal that is well-supported by the community and very flexible. ‘CAT12’ means it can employ multiple bands (think ‘channels’) from multiple provider antennas simultaneously. Higher is better. Your iPhone is a CAT16 device because reliability is very important to snooty phone consumers.
This is powered by ‘GoldenOrb’, a popular firmware based on OpenWRT. It can be powered over 12v directly and should I need to add external antennas I can do so easily. If I do, I plan on getting something like this from Wireless Haven. The people at the Wireless Haven have been great and are a great boon to the community.
The device was about $300. So far, it’s quite good, even without an external antenna. I attached this near the chart table.
This device does Wifi, too, so it’s creating a local wireless network. It can be configured to use a marina wifi network or external device like a StarLink automatically, with various prioritizations, as its uplink.
NMEA/SeaTalk etc are the standards for on-boat communication, equivalent to CanBus for a car. In evolutionary terms they’re somewhere between ‘fax machine’ and ‘slime mold’.
Nobody has a ‘modern’ NMEA2000 bus for all of its navigation and instrumentation data. Yacht Devices makes a simple network router that can unify NMEA2000, NMEA0183, and wireless and bridge between them. Plug in your various networks and they get shared onto the wireless; it can also take data back in from the wireless, and send it back to your other devices, allowing display of new information on your multifunction screens.
It runs OpenPlotter, a minimalist operating system that includes many useful tools like celestial navigation calculators as well as the ‘standard’ tools for boat computing, like SignalK, a visual programming tool for transforming and relaying information. OpenPlotter turns into a boat computer ‘out of the box’. It supports many different home-brew solutions for AIS and is in general the cutting edge of the friendly open-source and tinkering community on boats.
Another gorilla in this space is “Bare Boat Necessities”, a mammoth undertaking by a single person to build an even more fully-featured setup, with all of the above plus more. I found it heavily tweaked toward the author’s own preferences and difficult to maintain and upgrade. I applaud his vision, but decided it was simply too much for me.
It’s all powered by a simple 12v-5v buck converter, a very efficient DC-DC transformer available for a few dollars.
Five minutes, literally, is enough to set up ZeroTier and have two devices in two different locations communicating securely. After decades in this space, I was stunned at how easy it was.
I built remote sensors out of Shelly Unis and ESP32s, both crazy easy. A bit mind blowing. The ESP32 requires some programming skill, but the $15 Uni I simply packaged up in a project box and exposed a couple of wires with a wiring block on the outside. It runs on 12-36v DC, and does most everything you’d want right out of the box so it’s a matter of wiring connections.
Literally, apply power and connect some wires:
Looks like I left a dishtowel sitting on the galley shelf.
For fun I also added an IP camera. I got one capable of taking the DC power directly over the ethernet cable, and weatherproof. I’ll move it up to the cockpit, but for now it’s inside.
I found the ReoLink brand to be a great blend of low price and reliability. They, too, show up without any work in HomeAssistant, and bridge to your iPhone, etc easily. With HomeAssistant they can easily let you know if there is a human in sight, motion in general, etc.
The next time I need to add instrumentation, I'll run an ethernet cable the length of the boat. This will provide six conductors for thermometers, humidity sensors, fan controls, or whatever else I may need to add and saving running wires later.
It’s raining buckets in the San Juan Islands right now. Not so in my garden in San Francisco, where rain would be welcomed like a visiting dignitary. But from where I sit, I can see both wan California winter sunlight and that the bilge pump in S/V Nobody, lying near the Canadian border, is not running – and that the batteries are charged, and that no one has been aboard today.In the 80s, when my boat was built, boat electronics were at the same enthusiastic but unskilled level as music videos. Today, a modern boat presents information about its systems in an informational stream that adheres to a set of standards, making it interchangeable and malleable. We are used to, at this point, being able to configure helm instruments to show true or apparent wind, compass course, etc. The same configurable screens can, on many boats, show cross-track error, fuel gauges, or tank capacity.
It’s easy to say that this is ‘too much’ technology and not be wrong. Every system on a boat is a liability, and a mortgage on your future time in dealing with its failure. That said, some systems are still worth adopting. Imagine sailing without a roller furler. Yes, they can fail in a way that a hank-on sail cannot… but my are they nice.
So, de gustibus, but there are a few reasons that a modern instrumentation system might make it ‘over the line’ and justify its complexity:
Installation. There’s simplicity to be gained in turning a dozen individual wires, each taking up space and prone to chafe and corrosion, into one wire - or even zero wires - via a well-defined standard. Pull out a dozen cables, each supposedly color-coded and each running the length of the boat from devices to dials, and replace it with a simple bus.
Recordkeeping. No more relying on faulty memory, and whichever side of the ‘paranoia/wishful thinking’ coin you flipped in the genetic lottery. Once data is recorded, historical records become easy to consult – and they’re very valuable:
- Compare RPM against temperature for the last year: The engine didn’t used to get this hot.
- See your engine oil pressure take a dip and know it’s reached its thermal breakdown point: Time to change the oil.
- See when your bilge pump starts running, or running more often, or (gulp) stops running as it used to. Better get down to the boat.
Remote Access! It’s raining. Want to drive down to the boat to see if the bilge pump is running more (or less) than historically?
Plus, of course, it’s just fun. And doing it DIY is enormously more powerful, and cheaper, than spending bazillions on the admittedly gorgeous B&G gear that can do it all.
Components
My system has the following parts:- Internet access & wifi - for remote access, and so devices, including charting devices, can communicate without wires.
- A bridge to make NMEA data available to the computer
- A cheap small computer that can receive and rebroadcast all the data, as a sort of information hub
- Some homemade sensors for monitoring other hardware
- A smart video camera so I can peek in.
Internet Access & Wifi
Wifi is nice because it removes the need to run wires back and forth. There is a power cost, but it’s low. On my boat, both all the navigational data that goes over the NMEA bus plus additional data I’ve added are broadcast across the wifi. This means that chart plotter applications can all participate in the boat data system, so that eg AIS data shows up in Navionics Boating as well as on the built-in chart plotter.This would be plenty, but it’s fairly easy to add internet to support remote monitoring and automation of things like logging trips to triplogger.
Your regular consumer-level LTE modems or ‘mifi’-style objects, typically sold by your provider and meant to be portable, won’t do. They’re hard to power, not meant to be left on full-time, can’t be attached via a single cable.
I settled on a CAT12 device by Taktikal that is well-supported by the community and very flexible. ‘CAT12’ means it can employ multiple bands (think ‘channels’) from multiple provider antennas simultaneously. Higher is better. Your iPhone is a CAT16 device because reliability is very important to snooty phone consumers.
This is powered by ‘GoldenOrb’, a popular firmware based on OpenWRT. It can be powered over 12v directly and should I need to add external antennas I can do so easily. If I do, I plan on getting something like this from Wireless Haven. The people at the Wireless Haven have been great and are a great boon to the community.
The device was about $300. So far, it’s quite good, even without an external antenna. I attached this near the chart table.
This device does Wifi, too, so it’s creating a local wireless network. It can be configured to use a marina wifi network or external device like a StarLink automatically, with various prioritizations, as its uplink.
NMEA Bridge
NMEA/SeaTalk etc are the standards for on-boat communication, equivalent to CanBus for a car. In evolutionary terms they’re somewhere between ‘fax machine’ and ‘slime mold’.Nobody has a ‘modern’ NMEA2000 bus for all of its navigation and instrumentation data. Yacht Devices makes a simple network router that can unify NMEA2000, NMEA0183, and wireless and bridge between them. Plug in your various networks and they get shared onto the wireless; it can also take data back in from the wireless, and send it back to your other devices, allowing display of new information on your multifunction screens.
Computer
The computer is a Raspberry Pi, a common enthusiast computer the size of a couple decks of cards.It runs OpenPlotter, a minimalist operating system that includes many useful tools like celestial navigation calculators as well as the ‘standard’ tools for boat computing, like SignalK, a visual programming tool for transforming and relaying information. OpenPlotter turns into a boat computer ‘out of the box’. It supports many different home-brew solutions for AIS and is in general the cutting edge of the friendly open-source and tinkering community on boats.
Another gorilla in this space is “Bare Boat Necessities”, a mammoth undertaking by a single person to build an even more fully-featured setup, with all of the above plus more. I found it heavily tweaked toward the author’s own preferences and difficult to maintain and upgrade. I applaud his vision, but decided it was simply too much for me.
It’s all powered by a simple 12v-5v buck converter, a very efficient DC-DC transformer available for a few dollars.
HomeAssistant
To the computer I added HomeAssistant, a popular home automation tool. It provides the data recording and visualization, including dashboards. It’s also bridgeable to my home, allowing me to ask Siri whether the bilge pump is running.ZeroTier
ZeroTier is a brilliant mechanism for creating a secure tunnel over any network link, even a cellular modem. You can read their description, but the short version is that it allows communicating with your private ‘network’ invisibly over an encrypted layer, quite safely.Five minutes, literally, is enough to set up ZeroTier and have two devices in two different locations communicating securely. After decades in this space, I was stunned at how easy it was.
Telemetry
As long as we have a network link, I may as well start monitoring boat systems in some ridiculous way, right? I created a couple of custom sensors from fairly off-the-shelf parts to monitor battery, bilge pump, oil pressure (and therefore engine run time), etc.Sensors
I built remote sensors out of Shelly Unis and ESP32s, both crazy easy. A bit mind blowing. The ESP32 requires some programming skill, but the $15 Uni I simply packaged up in a project box and exposed a couple of wires with a wiring block on the outside. It runs on 12-36v DC, and does most everything you’d want right out of the box so it’s a matter of wiring connections.Literally, apply power and connect some wires:
- Connect the existing white wire to the bilge pump just downstream of the pump, and it will activate whenever the pump comes on, sending a signal onto your wireless network which is dutifully logged by HomeAssistant. No ground line needed; it works by detecting a change in potential.
- Connect the orange analog sensor wire to the red power input and you have a battery voltage monitor. (Two banks visible in the image here).
- Plug in a $5 temp sensor and zip tie it to the battery charger: you have a charger temperature monitor.
Camera
Looks like I left a dishtowel sitting on the galley shelf.
For fun I also added an IP camera. I got one capable of taking the DC power directly over the ethernet cable, and weatherproof. I’ll move it up to the cockpit, but for now it’s inside.
I found the ReoLink brand to be a great blend of low price and reliability. They, too, show up without any work in HomeAssistant, and bridge to your iPhone, etc easily. With HomeAssistant they can easily let you know if there is a human in sight, motion in general, etc.
Next Steps
One thing I haven’t yet added is AIS. My boat has an unused VHF antenna, but I will probably purchase the MAIANA AIS antenna. For $200, this puts the brains of the unit inside the antenna, rather than requiring a long and fragile antenna cable that reduces reception range. It then broadcasts across the local network, putting AIS on every device on the boat. Until I get that, I will turn on an internet-based AIS tool like Boat Beacon, which accomplishes the same effect.The next time I need to add instrumentation, I'll run an ethernet cable the length of the boat. This will provide six conductors for thermometers, humidity sensors, fan controls, or whatever else I may need to add and saving running wires later.
