New Zealand Yacht Tracking project gains momentum

6:39 PM Fri 19 Feb 2010 GMT

New Zealand's Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club has developed a system to broadcast club racing on the internet. The system allows people to keep track of yachts from the club as they race around the harbour or take part in offshore races. RPNYC vice commodore Dave Roberts has been instrumental in developing the system and explains how it works.

This isn't new technology - automatic vehicle location, or AVL, has been around for some time. But what we've done is put together a low-cost system that meets our needs, which was the goal a couple of years back when John Hardie and Stephen Moir started the project.

There are three main parts to the system:

1) The tracking device on board that sends the boat's position, speed and heading as a text message to the receiver
2) The receiver that interprets the text messages and stores the data for display
3) The display that plots the boat positions on a map

The project went quiet for a while as the focus was on building a reliable tracking device rather than a way to automatically present the information received, instead of having to manually transfer the data from a cell phone.

Late last year Tony Wells kick started the effort to build the receiving end and now we have a system that, without human intervention, receives and plots the information - no more getting up at midnight to plot the scheds.

We've been testing the boundaries of the system during the last month - Clear Vision proved the tracker works across Cook Strait, at least as far as the Chetwode Islands, and the system tracked two boats (Clear Vision and Flying Circus) at thirty-second intervals in Port Nicholson regatta, with the map automatically updating in the Wardroom.

The system provides information for both safety and interest - during the two-handed Lyttelton Race involving twelve boats there were twelve pairs of eyes looking at the midnight sched, and in one Cook Strait race the RO received a late night call from Maritime Radio to say that a boat had missed two scheds in a row - no problem, the tracker still shows them heading NW at 13 knots.

Colours for different speeds -

It has the potential to be used beyond cell phone coverage because the receiver and display parts are independent of the tracking device - we've tested it with the SPOT Satellite Messenger personal tracker.

This opens the possibility to track blue water races or just to keep your friends updated on your next Pacific Islands cruise (there's a hint, Brent). We're also now thinking how we can get the tracking down to one-second intervals for the match racing.

The next step now is to get trackers on at least all the boats in the Club's offshore races. And when that's proved itself, we can package it up as a service for other clubs.

We'll have trackers on Clear Vision and Ran Tan II for the Brothers Race on Saturday.

by RPNYC Events