A bridge over (not) troubled waters: Collecting marine data
summary
A restored 1979 Tollycraft gets live telemetry: a Raspberry Pi Anode smart plotter aggregates cheap Zigbee sensors (≈$20) alongside required NMEA safety devices, routes everything through Signal K into an onboard Mosquitto broker, tunnels via Tailscale to Home Assistant, and drives automations like heater shutoff and bilge alerts. Experiments add Meshtastic mesh for underway connectivity and an MQTT-over-mesh Troubled Waters bridge that already sends real-time boat data back to home dashboards.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (15)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:13Why we bought a boat
- 3:36Remote boat monitoring challenges
- 5:01Open source data system design
- 6:51Anode smart boat plotter
- 8:44NMEA sensor costs
- 10:14Sensors to Signal K and MQTT
- 12:12Affordable sensor network
- 13:50Signal K unifies boat data
- 16:09Boat to home data bridge
- 17:36Dashboard and automation
- 18:44Safety approval
- 19:05Next steps beyond Wi-Fi
- 19:54Meshtastic underway data
- 21:02Project conclusion
related talks
33mSmart and Simple Data Driven Hydroponic Sensing Applications Using Python, Flask & Raspberry Pi
15mHack My Ride
47mHow to make IoT from dumb device using raspberry and "tambourine"
28mMonsters, mailboxes and other nonsense
35mAutomate your home by building your own Zigbee bridge
06mThinking Outside the Classroom: Building an Edge Device To Monitor Atmospheric Conditions
23mBuilding An Over Engineered Weather Station
28mHow to make your LEDs better listeners