Sensors for battery voltage, engine hours and bilge pump

In the following text, the basic sensors are described, the information of which every owner of a boat, charter renter or sailor should have in the palm of his hand.

Battery voltage sensor of the boat

This extremely important information must be available to you at all times. Neglect ship battery voltage conditions (battery) will lead you to a situation where you will not be able to start the boat's engine. Because of this, you will lose a sailing day and spend it charging the battery.

Another problem is the lifetime of the ship's battery. Due to lack of care for the battery, sulphation and deep discharge occur. Most ships are don't use every day, and a long-discharged battery becomes susceptible to damage. A discharged battery will begin to crystallize lead sulfate on its lead plates and when that layer becomes thick enough, no amount of charging will be able to restore its working capacity. Such a battery is for replacement.

With the BeeDigital satellite system, battery status information is always there. You can see the voltage at any time on your mobile device. When the battery voltage drops below a certain level you will receive an alarm via push mobile phone notifications. To get information about the battery status you do not need to connect additional sensors, you only need to connect the GPS tracker device to the boat installation or the battery.

Classic on-board battery voltage sensor.

Bilge pump / bilge sensor 

The bilge pump is a simple mechanism consisting of a float that rises due to the presence of water and activates the pump. Of course, the pump throws out sea water or more more often rainwater from inside the ship. At high temperatures, the damp interior of the boat will quickly create mold and unpleasant odors that you won't get rid of easily. You already know everything about the sinking of the ship yourself.

 Bilge pump activation float

It is important to have current information about the activation of the bilge, but the question is how to do it. With our BeeDigital solution for GPS satellite monitoring of the ship it's simple. You connect one wire of the GPS tracker / locator device to the bilge pump or to the float. When the bilge pump float rises, it will activate the pump ignition and eject the water from the boat. At the same time, the device activates the sending of alarm messages to Wialon tracking platform as well as your mobile device.

You can have multiple mobile devices and you will receive on each of them alarm message in Croatian about the information that the bilge pump has turned on. You can also extract a detailed report on the operation of the bilge pump for the last three months of monitoring. From turning on the pump to getting an alarm in practice, it will take a few seconds.

Since it is a simple installation in most cases you no need for an electrician.

Hours counter and marine engine service

As we know it is engine running? Simple, using change detection battery voltage. A running marine or outboard engine starts charging the battery with a certain voltage. The voltage difference can be accurately detected using our GPS satellite vessel monitoring system. Every minute of engine operation is added to the total number of working hours. Of course, you can also have a special device/clock for measuring the working hours of the engine as in the picture, but why complicate things. In our BeeDigital vessel monitoring platform, you can see at any time when and where the ship's engine is on, how long did the engine work, even have approximate consumption fuel according to mathematical calculation.

 A classic analog marine engine hour counter

Marine engine service monitoring

Since the engines are serviced after a certain number of working hours, you can have a detailed insight into the services through the monitoring platform. You can also get a notification when it's time to service the engine. If you have one boat for then you can probably do it yourself. But if you have more ships that are in charter, rent or are actively used throughout the year then this is a cheap and easy solution for monitoring and control.

You can have a detailed report on the ignition of a marine or outboard engine on your mobile phone, or you can receive it automatically in to PDF format to your email every day, week or as desired.

The best boat monitoring app 

Boaters often ask which is the best mobile app for ship monitoring. That question is not easy to answer. There are many mobile applications, cloud platforms for satellite monitoring and surveillance. It is important to have an application that allows receiving alarms in real time, precise cartography which has in it nautical charts and the possibility of making your own geozone and notifications related to them. For example, to know when your ship has left the berth.

If you are less proficient in foreign languages, it is certainly desirable that the application has a translation to Croatian language.

The best boat monitoring app would have to be quite versatile in terms of the notifications and functionality it provides. For example, in the event of water ingress and activation of the bilge pump, a drop in the voltage of the ship's battery or any other alarm (which you can activate and deactivate yourself), the mobile ship monitoring application must alert you via push notifications.

It must have the ability to activate and receive additional notifications reports via e-mail. This is especially interesting if you have a boat docked in a marina, then the marina staff can receive a notification email and immediately take the necessary actions to fix the problem even without your intervention.

Of course, ours BeeDigital solution for GPS satellite monitoring of vessels it has all the necessary functionalities.