Multiple water sensors for different compartments

Shark’s Head, the established developer of microcontroller solutions and Australian manufacturer of marine electronics equipment, is proud to offer a water sensor solution which can be extended to monitor multiple compartments in the boat independently. In case nobody is on board, alerts can also be sent to the user via SMS or email using an optional 3G or 4G router.

“Currently the float switch on a boat simply turns on a pump if there is too much water in the bilge. Our system doesn’t replace that switch, but it can now keep an eye on a number of compartments (up to 200 sensors are supported) at the same time and also notify the user if he’s not on board” explains Heinz Zerbes, the lead hardware developer behind Shark’s Head. “That way, arbitrary areas of the boat can be covered, even if they’re not connected to the central bilge. On top of that, these smart sensors are also reporting back how often and how long the bilge pump was running and even the ambient temperature in each compartment.” 

All the sensor information is being passed wirelessly to a central on-board server, greatly simplifying the installation. 

The central server contains two radios that can be used license-free world-wide: one to talk to the sensors and one WIFI interface for the graphical web-based user interface. It also hosts the database which allows easy review of years of sensor data. The fast web interface furthermore eliminates the need for installing and later updating a separate app.