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If my
megayacht were laying in Cannes while I snowboarded in the Alps, I would
much appreciate a daily call from my skipper assuring me that everything
was shipshape…in my dreams! In reality, my old, odd 25-foot stern
drive Ralph is on a mooring about a mile away in Camden harbor, and I
can check on him fairly easily. But often the truth is that many days
go by when I am too busy, and the boat I adore becomes a source of worry.
I’m pleased to report that I’ve been testing a nifty cure
for “Is the boat OK?” anxiety, the HarborMaster monitoring
system.
For
starters, Ralph now sends me an e-mail every morning detailing battery
voltages, bilge pump activity, and much more. These reports are also kept
at a password-protected Web site where I can check them and observe trends.
Better yet, if any one of the HarborMaster’s 12 alarms is activated,
I get an automated phone call as well as an e-mail warning. I tested several
of these, and the call came just moments after I breached a magnetic intrusion
alarm or lifted the high-water sensor.
The
wireless part of the HarborMaster’s impressive communications scheme
is handled by the Aeris MicroBurst network (www.aeris.net),
a proprietary utility that transmits short data packets over the control
channels of analog cellular networks. Performance where I live in Maine
was excellent, even though my area is quite hilly and a bit backwards
in terms of cell coverage. The unit even worked well in my basement shop
without using the optional fixed antenna. Beacon Wireless, which designed
and markets the HarborMaster, claims good coverage throughout the United
States, Canada, and Mexico.
The
HarborMaster sends data to Beacon’s secure server, which is then
responsible for getting the information out as voice calls, pager messages,
e-mails—whatever the customer specifies via his or her personal
Web page. Here’s where you start to see what a well-thought-out
product this is. For instance, besides the three regular alarm contacts,
you can easily set up three more customized ones. Say you live hours away
from your moored boat; you can have a couple of critical alarms like high
water and burglar intrusion also sent to a friend or marina operation
close by. When your ally goes aboard your boat and acknowledges the alarm
flashing on the unit, you’re immediately notified.
You
can also communicate back to the boat, perhaps asking for a fresh statistics
report or remotely triggering a relay to turn on lights or air conditioning.
You can even remotely arm and disarm the system, allowing a service person
to access the boat without giving away a password or keytag. The automotive-style
keytag, by the way, is a real kick. You can close up the boat, step onto
the dock or into the tender, then hit your button and hear a reassuring
beep that the boat is armed. When returning, you can also use the keytag
to turn on a deck light. Nice!
The
deeper you probe the HarborMaster, the more you’ll find in the way
of user control. Let’s look at bilge pump statistics for a moment.
The HarborMaster monitors both cycles and duration of pumping and builds
a database of typical behavior. Statistics are kept on everything, and
alarms can be set on several criteria. A continuous pump over a certain
threshold (30 seconds to 30 minutes) is probably cause for alarm on your
boat, as it is on mine. However, since Ralph’s open cockpit drains
to the bilge, inconsistent pumping is usually a sign of rainstorms, not
leaks; therefore I set the HarborMaster to call me only if the pump cycle
was ten times the average. On a less eccentric boat you might set the
system to alert you when pumps run only two times more than on average.
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