Alarm systems and circuits

Good overview of alarm systems on boats, including some suggestions for wiring up a specialized or customized alarm.

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.

I am very interested in this article. Unfortunately I could not get the link to work, I keep getting the 404 page not found error message.
Thanks

ksanders said:

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.

Click to expand...

Chuck, it does not load?


What alarm system do you have? I been looking at the boatnanny http://www.theboatnanny.com/index.html

MORE important for a boat that folks are absent from is a bilge pump ON counter.

If the bilge pumps fine , and the high water alarm switch is not activated it would be nice to know weather the pump ran 2X during the month away , or 2500 times!

Phil Fill said:

What alarm system do you have? I been looking at the boatnanny [URL]http://www.theboatnanny.com/index.html[/URL]

Click to expand...

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.

ksanders said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

Try this:

http://www.http://www.digital.turn-page.com/i/162687/104

That should work

Try this link........

Phil Fill said:

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.

Click to expand...

My boats internet connection can use either satellite or cellular as its connection type. When I'm within range of at&t we get cell based internet. When we're out of cell range we get satellite based internet. About 2 mbps anywhere in the world.

The alarm system uses the internet connection to send text messages, e-mails, etc...

Having had our boat ransacked twice in the past 18 months, we looked at many systems and went with a cellular wireless system, It can handle up to 99 wireless and 7 wired sensors. (both burglar and systems monitoring. It can be set to text you or call you when tripped and can be operated remotely by phone or text, ie: arm/disarm/listen-in/speak to intruder/ etc. The main control unit can also be used as an ordinary fixed cell phone.

In addition I wanted the added protection of remote cameras so I could look in on the boat from anywhere and went with a similar wireless GSM system for the camera which also acts as a fully featured backup alarm system.

I was looking for something inexpensive, simple and intuitive to both instal and operate and decided to go with these two systems:

GSM Mobile Cellular LCD SMS Wireless Home Security System Burglar Alarm G 7W3M | eBay

2012 Long Range BG30L MMS GPRS Email IR Wireless Surveillance Security Camera | eBay

It only took a couple hours to instal the entire system and so far (6 months) it has worked flawlessly and I'm quite pleased with it. I bought a $100 prepaid T-Mobile phone card which is good for a year so my ongoing costs are about $9.00 a month.

Disclaimer: I have no association with the two links provided except that this is where I bought mine. Note that the batteries provided in both systems are poor and should be replaced with new. Both also come with Chinglish instructions and are difficult to follow. If you look around ebay there are many similar systems as well.

Working link

Thank you for supplying a working link. Great article and magazine.