Im very pleased, have to tell someone! Just got Pitch and Roll working on my Trek Transponder. So you can send an SMS to your boat and check out the sea conditions where it is or check if boat is listing. You get 15 pitch and roll numbers (degrees) taken at 1 second intervals. It uses an electronic accelerometer which measures force of gravity and calculates into angles. Looking at the ping below Trek is rolling very slightly but is pitching bow down. I would welcome comments on any better format? Maybe it should also measure "heave" ?

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Trek said..
Im very pleased, have to tell someone! Just got Pitch and Roll working on my Trek Transponder. So you can send an SMS to your boat and check out the sea conditions where it is or check if boat is listing. You get 15 pitch and roll numbers (degrees) taken at 1 second intervals. It uses an electronic accelerometer which measures force of gravity and calculates into angles. Looking at the ping below Trek is rolling very slightly but is pitching bow down. I would welcome comments on any better format? Maybe it should also measure "heave" ?

Tony, looks good. Have to say I am very happy with your transponder that I fitted. The original 2G version was good but this one is quicker and more feature packed, but still would have preferred not to have to spend the extra money ( oh how I am over the tellco's).
One of my neighbouring boats got burgled recently, cost him thousands and reaffirmed my decision to install the new one.
Cheers

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UncleBob said..

Trek said..
Im very pleased, have to tell someone! Just got Pitch and Roll working on my Trek Transponder. So you can send an SMS to your boat and check out the sea conditions where it is or check if boat is listing. You get 15 pitch and roll numbers (degrees) taken at 1 second intervals. It uses an electronic accelerometer which measures force of gravity and calculates into angles. Looking at the ping below Trek is rolling very slightly but is pitching bow down. I would welcome comments on any better format? Maybe it should also measure "heave" ?

Tony, looks good. Have to say I am very happy with your transponder that I fitted. The original 2G version was good but this one is quicker and more feature packed, but still would have preferred not to have to spend the extra money ( oh how I am over the tellco's).
One of my neighbouring boats got burgled recently, cost him thousands and reaffirmed my decision to install the new one.
Cheers

Uncle Bob
They were around us recently too so must be in the area.
A liveaboard near me chased a guy off looking at mine. Another near me had some items moved in his cockpit.

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twodogs1969 said..

UncleBob said..

Trek said..
Im very pleased, have to tell someone! Just got Pitch and Roll working on my Trek Transponder. So you can send an SMS to your boat and check out the sea conditions where it is or check if boat is listing. You get 15 pitch and roll numbers (degrees) taken at 1 second intervals. It uses an electronic accelerometer which measures force of gravity and calculates into angles. Looking at the ping below Trek is rolling very slightly but is pitching bow down. I would welcome comments on any better format? Maybe it should also measure "heave" ?

Tony, looks good. Have to say I am very happy with your transponder that I fitted. The original 2G version was good but this one is quicker and more feature packed, but still would have preferred not to have to spend the extra money ( oh how I am over the tellco's).
One of my neighbouring boats got burgled recently, cost him thousands and reaffirmed my decision to install the new one.
Cheers

Uncle Bob
They were around us recently too so must be in the area.
A liveaboard near me chased a guy off looking at mine. Another near me had some items moved in his cockpit.

Hi, yes there seems to be somewhat regular visiting of this nature. My original purchase of one of these was in response to the theft and damage to my boat a couple of years ago and only the closing down of the 2G network forced me to buy again.
Can honestly say I am not sorry that I have.
Cheers

Well if they do get on your boat Bob you will know straightaway and have a nice photo of them sent to your phone for the police

I wish I had the cams back at the time the ferals stole all the diesel from my boat and left gouge marks on the hull, it would be lovely to identify them.

Level ONE protection against theft (and flooding) could be considered an intelligent sensor with real time Sim-card communication, like Trek's nifty device.

Short of that, what ideas are out there that could provide level TWO protection?

Does anyone have experience of using a 12volt PIR sensor (sold for caravans and sheds) installed inside the boat cabin? It may turn on either a bright flashing deck light or a loud buzzer. Or will a simple window switch on the main hatch provide much the same protection?

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Trek said..
Well if they do get on your boat Bob you will know straightaway and have a nice photo of them sent to your phone for the police

I wish I had the cams back at the time the ferals stole all the diesel from my boat and left gouge marks on the hull, it would be lovely to identify them.

We got some great pics of a prick siphoning fuel from our trucks, hose in mouth, can in hand the whole show. Identified him, give it to the cops, guess what ? Not admissible in court ! Cops can only use pics to coerce the f$&@/: to fess up ! Maybe you could incorporate a taser to slow em down till the esteemed constabulary arrive

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Karsten said..
Level ONE protection against theft (and flooding) could be considered an intelligent sensor with real time Sim-card communication, like Trek's nifty device.

Short of that, what ideas are out there that could provide level TWO protection?

Does anyone have experience of using a 12volt PIR sensor (sold for caravans and sheds) installed inside the boat cabin? It may turn on either a bright flashing deck light or a loud buzzer. Or will a simple window switch on the main hatch provide much the same protection?

Hi KArsten,

I have a PIR in the cockpit, connected to a TRek from Tony.
Idea is, as soon as they step in, it activates a solenoid output on the Trek, switching on a siren and strobe, hopefully they bugger off before trying to break in.PIR is just a std home type available from Jaycar and the like.

I keep a cover on the cockpit on the mooring, and only had 1 false alarm when a cormorant got in under the cover.
The system works well, apart from also having to do the 2G to 4G upgrade, plus having to wait for stock.

Thanks Crusty for the very useful info on the PIR. Sounds like birds may set it off, so I'll need to find a way to mount it with a deflector or something, so it sweeps just the cockpit sole and nothing higher.

The common trick in the cockpit is to put the PIR under a table (dining table in saloon) or similar looking across so it catches the legs of pirates, or on the ceiling of the dog house, if there is one, looking down. On Trek we've got a 5 beer can holder on the steering pedestal and my PIR is under that.

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Trek said..
Im very pleased, have to tell someone! Just got Pitch and Roll working on my Trek Transponder. So you can send an SMS to your boat and check out the sea conditions where it is or check if boat is listing. You get 15 pitch and roll numbers (degrees) taken at 1 second intervals. It uses an electronic accelerometer which measures force of gravity and calculates into angles. Looking at the ping below Trek is rolling very slightly but is pitching bow down. I would welcome comments on any better format? Maybe it should also measure "heave" ?

If it were me, I'd distill these into more a more concise format.
I'd have:
Average Roll (measures if your boat is listing)
Average Pitch (measures your boat's static pitch)
RMS Roll (Take the Root Mean Square of all the numbers in the Roll column, gives an indication of sea state)
RMS Pitch (Similar to RMS Roll)

I'd have them in a gauge format as well, with colours. Average Roll and Pitch would be a dual direction guage, with centre top 0, with orange at 5 degrees, red at 10.

RMS Roll and Pitch would be a normal 'speedo' type guage, with orange at 15, and red at 40 (that's just a guess at the numbers).

Using the data above, it would show the attached image.

Nebbian you are absolutely right. The problem I have is limited time available to implement these things, just getting the acccelerometer itself to work took hours and hours of grappling with sin cos and tan in a tiny 8 bit MCU. Whereas the average PC has 4GB of RAM (4,000,000,000 bytes) I'm working with 4K (4,000 bytes) total to reduce power, size and cost and the pitch and roll part has only 100 bytes available! Most of the requests are for something like this with period and height marked on it, but it needs to be a software generated MMS to keep it simple:And if the accelerometer see something like below an alarm is sent :-)



I have contemplated copying the Wave Rider format exactly so the two readings would be compatible and implementing "heave". Like this
new.mhl.nsw.gov.au/data/realtime/wave/Buoy-syddow

Hi Trek,

I've been programming AVR's for 20 odd years so I know what you're up against.

Note that just about all the processing can be done on the client. ie if you can send that list of numbers, then the client's computer can do the crunching. It's not hard at all.

Also those graphs were done in a javascript library, which is again processed on the client.


Just for giggles, here's a pic of something I've been working on, it's an externally charged, random flashing, colour selectable squid jig. The chip is an ATTiny85, programmed to be able to change colour when you hold the jig up against a magnet. Good fun.

Very nice; a couple of serious electronics brains in this thread.

Couple of simple questions out of curiosity:
What voltage do you charge the capacitor to?
Is that a reverse polarity diode on the cap posv?
What is the slim component soldered to the cap negv?

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Karsten said..
Very nice; a couple of serious electronics brains in this thread.

Couple of simple questions out of curiosity:
What voltage do you charge the capacitor to?
Is that a reverse polarity diode on the cap posv?
What is the slim component soldered to the cap negv?

This is completely off topic from the OP, but since you asked...

Capacitor is charged to around 5.5V, using an external battery pack with alligator clips.
Yes it's a reverse polarity diode, although it's more used to stop the cap voltage from leaking out into the seawater and causing galvanic corrosion (as well as losing charge quicker)
The slim component is a reed switch, used to sense when a magnet is close by so you can change colours.

Here it is in action: