RUPERT HOLMES CHECKS OUT BOAT MONITORING SYSTEMS
AIRMAR SMARTBOAT
A monitor for all onboard systems, including legacy products.
Anyone wanting to display engine data, tank levels and much more on MFD screens, especially owners of older boats.
An increasing number of today’s new yachts come with digital switching that allows equipment to be monitored or controlled remotely from onboard multifunction displays (MFDs) and mobile apps. The monitoring aspect, which can include battery start, tank levels, number of bilge pump actuations and engine data is particularly useful. Until now, however, retrofitting such a system on older or smaller yachts has often posed numerous problems.
Airmar’s SmartBoat system is intended to solve these issues with a single product that can be used to easily connect multiple analogue or NMEA0183 sensors into a NMEA2000 compatible network. Therefore existing sensors don’t need to be replaced and there’s no need for any other signal translation modules.
Neat features include custom alarm triggers across multiple parameters. For instance you might set alarms to tell you if the automatic bilge pump has been activated more than a certain number of times in a specific time period and/ or whether it runs for longer than a set length of time. Alarms can also be cascaded, so you can set a warning threshold for engine temperature a little higher than the normal operating range to serve as a useful early warning before the critical alarm temperature is reached.
Set up is straightforward, even if you don’t know whether the existing analogue sensors are, for instance, resistive, voltage or thermistor types. You just select an option from a menu and if it doesn’t give readings that make sense, you go back to the menu and choose another option.
The system can also be used to monitor things like fridge temperatures, battery state and charging inputs. Equally, you can do a 10-point calibration on tank sensors to give accurate results even for tanks with an odd shape.
Interfaces are via NMEA2000, ethernet and wireless, plus two USB ports. The system is offered in three versions: a basic mode for older engine data protocols (going back the 1980s), while the T-4 and T-8 units will handle four or eight different analogue and/or NMEA0183 sensors respectively.
Price: US$800-$1,400 ex VAT. airmar.com
THREE OF THE REST
SIMARINE PICO Very neat battery and tank level monitor for up to three batteries and two tanks, with an excellent interface but without the flexibility of the SmartBoat system.
Price: from €355. simarine.ne
YACHT SENTINEL YS PRO Remote and onboard monitoring with data collected from NMEA2000, J1939, Ethernet, and other CANbus systems, but without the SmartBoat’s easy integration of legacy sensors.
