Chuck Gould
Senior Member
Good overview of alarm systems on boats, including some suggestions for wiring up a specialized or customized alarm.
Pacific Nor
Pacific Nor
This is a subject near and dear to my heart.
I have a custom alarm. System on my boat.
It monitors
Bilge water, 2 sensors
Shore power
Inverter power
Battery voltage
Cabin temp
Engine room temp
If anything goes beyond my alarm point then it texts, and e-mails me.
Alarm messages repeat at a frequency depending on the severity.
Communication is via the cellular network or satellite network if cell is not working or out of range.
I can also go to the unit and view its status via a web page.
What alarm system do you have? I been looking at the boatnanny [URL]http://www.theboatnanny.com/index.html[/URL]
The unit I used is a sensaphone web600, from www.sensaphone.com
This ties to our existing boats network, which uses a cradlepoint router/switch mbr1200B from www.cradlepoint.com
The cradlepoint unit provides internet connectivity using a AT&T USB mifi unit, which I added to my AT&T data plan for $20 a month.
The cradle point can also have a backup internet source which I tie into the KVH mini VSAT terminal on the boat.
This gives us seamless lowest cost internet on the boat. The cradlepoint has both wired and wireless on the LAN side. We use the wired connection for the alarm system, and the wifi provides connectivity to computers, phones, ipad, and even the Apple TV.
Is it satellite or cell towers based. I was looking for satellite as we are some time out of cell tower range. We have a wifi hot spot through Verizon on the boat. Also many smart phones can be hot spot also. Next year I plan on at least semi retiring, snow birds, so we will be leaving the boat months at a time, so want some sort of monitoring alarm system high water. To call my diesel mechanic and my cell phone.