We’re not sure the number of you out there own a boat large enough to get its own integrated computer network, however it does not actually matter. Even if you can’t use this project personally, it’s difficult not to be impressed with the work [mgrouch] has taken into the “Bareboat Necessities” task From the building of the hardware to the extraordinary documents, there’s plenty that even landlubbers can gain from this task.
In its completely recognized kind, the onboard computer system includes a number of elements that work together to offer a wealth of valuable info to the operator.
What [mgrouch] calls the “Boat Computer system” consists of a Raspberry Pi 4, a dAISy AIS receiver, an RTL-SDR, a GPS receiver, serial adapters, and the myriad of wires required to get them all speaking with each other inside a weatherproof enclosure. As you may anticipate, this includes running all the connections through leak-proof panel installs.
Combined with a suite of open source software application tools, the “Boat Computer system” can interfacing with NMEA sensors and hardware, get weather information directly from NOAA satellites, track ships, and of course plot your current position on a digital chart. The computer system itself is developed to stay securely listed below deck, while the operator communicates with it through an Argonaut M7 waterproofed HDMI touch screen located in the cockpit.
For some people, that might be enough. For those who want to do big, [mgrouch] even more details the “Boat Gateway” gadget. This system contains an LTE-equipped WiFi router running OpenWrt and all the external antennas required to turn the boat into a drifting hotspot. Naturally it also has RJ45 jacks to link as much as the other components of the onboard system, and it even includes an M5Stack Core with LAN module so it can show a choose subset of sensing unit readings and navigational data.
If you wish to do something comparable on a a little smaller scale, we have actually seen sailing computers that pushed all the information to a wearable display or even a repurposed eReader