Regal 2250 - Remote boat monitor

[mlines]

Am I allowed to feel very pleased with myself today?

15 minutes reading about JSON and.....

[ColinR]

Short answer - yes

[Ianfs]

Oh yeeaaahhh!

[mlines]

Well its been out and running live on the boat for a couple of days. In a very geeky way it is producing some interesting graphs.

The first night the outside dropped to 3 degrees but the de-humidifier kept it around 3 degrees higher. You can see the de-humidifer cycling off and on on its internal humidistat nicely.

Last night was colder but clearly the air was drier so the de-humidifer did not come on, this allowed the temperature to drop but then the humidity must have risen slightly and the humidifier came back on meaning the humidity and temperature starting to change with the device going off and on.

On the battery line you can see the C-TEK charger going through its pulse work as well. They are AGM batteries for which it delivers a 14.7 volt pulse charge.

[Ianfs]

I wonder how much the parts and labour has cost at this stage. Labour will be a lot of R&D though.
On second thoughts don't answer that question.
Anyhow.... Fantastic. A great little tool.

[mlines]

Yes - its all about the labour, but that was fun.

Arduino controller: - £8.50 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arduino-UNO-R ... 1782207020
GSM Card: - £15.00 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SIM900-GPRS-G ... SwEK9UKUxS
Display:- £4 - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yellow-Green- ... SwQJhUgDTM
Processor upgrade: £12 - (probably not needed if you tidy up my code!)
Lots of sundry parts - connectors/box/wire

In the form you see it probably £60 all in.

I have a GPS card and 3 axis movement sensor to add on which cost some more but these are not in the solution yet as I decided to deploy it as is for this winter otherwise it would be a project that was never used.

All of the code etc. is on Fritzing (as I understand this is the way to publish these things) - the code release needs updating.

http://fritzing.org/projects/boat-monitor/

[shibbs]

All very clever, I'm very impressed! Will you be selling it?

[Ianfs]

£60 retail........£20 wholesale, programming once established, 10mins????

Retail £49.99, sales to UK, Europe and the US in excess of 1 million units..........take out production costs..... question? Which Marina will you buy for James? The Isle of Wight maybe??

Shall we hide this thread?

[ian h]

Martin, Very intresting project and can see a market for this,

How would you adapt it for 2 engine batteries and 1 house battery ?
And 2 different temp zones. I.E for me 1 in the engine bay and 1 for cabin ?
Will it advise of power loss ?

[mlines]

Thanks to everyone for the compliments!

The little processor has:

Up to 8 Analogue ports
Up to 32 digital ports

(Not all ports operate simultaneously as they are dual purpose).

Each voltage (i.e. battery) uses one Analogue port, so I could monitor up to 8 batteries, its only a simple resistor input so its really cheap to do and is already in the software code so adding ports is a breeze.

Each temperature sensor uses one digital port, so again it can be easily added to. I also realised that it really needs a fully external sensor and an engine sensor so I get Internal/External/Engine readings, but that is an evolution stage. Also a simple relay or "on/off" style feed into a digital port will give a main power fail alarm (again this is on the cards to do)

I guess a unit could be produced but it would required CE certification etc. The real flexibility in the unit is from the web server that it feeds. It simply reports the values into a web based database. The analysis of this information is what produces the graphs, if I look at what other companies sell nowadays its the "cloud" server capability which would produce a monthly income as people subscribe to the reporting service.........

I am building a mark 2 with the missing features and better build quality.

PS. It does have full two way capability, at the moment I have code that lets it receive SMS so it can switch things off/on based on commands. It will also run a limited web server so can respond that way as well,

Martin