After my last anchor alarm stopped sending remote alarm notifications, I got on a mission to find the best replacement and after the last month of testing I have settled on Anchor Alarm Pro as the winner.
It had 90% of the features I required, was free and after a few messages to the developer, it now had 100% of the features I wanted.
I sent feedback messages to most other apps and never got any responces although I do think EH Anchor Alarm deserves a honourable mention.
12 Comments
JayleneSlide@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 12d
I'm using (before hauling out for major refit) the Watchdog plug-in in OpenCPN (https://opencpn-manuals.github.io/main/watchdog/index.html). I've got it scripted up with various alerts including SMS (when the boat has LTE/5G connection) and messages over LoRa.
BevsDad@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 11d
I'll have to give that plugin a try even if just for the course and landfall alarms. Normally I just use radar and wind shift alarms but this sounds like it could be very useful.
The LoRa integrations do seem interesting for sure as I have a 1W node on my masthead that gives me decent range.
Hope the refit is going well btw!
JayleneSlide@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11d
Thanks! We're doing everything: refit, repair, rearrange the interior, repaint, refinish the entire interior, re-powering (dial in our electric drive conversion), rewiring (full replacement), re-plumbing (full replacement), re-rigging, re-coring the deck, build a new rudder... you get the idea. We're currently on the hard, but going to stop lighting money on fire in the boatyard while we wait for new sails and a rigger (2-year lead time).
BevsDad@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 11d
2 year lead time?!? Wth! Sails usually took about 4 months for me but now I really want to contact the rigging shop where I'm spending the winter to see what kind of wait to expect.
That's a massive refit wow! Most of those items I'll also be doing before an Atlantic crossing but luckily my 45 year old deck is still dry and the original rudder molds still exist. Next spendy items on my list are an enclosed dodger, wind vane and stripping off the VC17 and redoing the epoxy layer + bottom paint.
What did you do for the electric drive? Hopefully not something like on the Theros with old Nissan leaf batteries...
JayleneSlide@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11d
Port Townsend Sails (formerly Carol Hasse sails) are all custom with serious lead time. I didn't think it was worth the money and wait until I delivered a sailboat with PT Sails to Hawaii. "Oh, that's where the money went." I'd put them even with Schattauer Sails for cruising cloth. My boat came with a full complement of 20 year old Schattauer sails with most of it offshore cruising. While the fabric and stitching were still mostly good, there was enough stretch to noticeably impact light wind performance.
Sounds like you have a refit project yourself! What vane are you going with?
Our electric drive is a QuietTorque 30.0 LC (48V) which replaced a Lehman 2412. It is more than plentiful for all of our use cases (and then some), but switching to electric dropped enough weight out of the boat to make it frustratingly tender (we're about 5000 pounds underweight after the first round of changes). Even with upcoming additions, we're probably going to put another 2500 pounds of lead in the keel (there's room for it) plus some trim ingots.
I built my own banks with Fortune 100Ah LFP cells, 16s in 8 discrete banks, BMS per bank with cell-level balancing. We're also going with an all-electric galley. With the re-arranging of the interior, space opened up by not having huge fuel tanks, eliminating and recovering almost all dead space, we now have more room for another 8 banks. And then some. That will bring us to 76kWh of angry pixies, plus another 730Wh in the 12V house bank. On the 800Ah banks, we could putt along at 3kt in calm water for ~90 hours, max throttle (>hull speed) for 2 hours.
BevsDad@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 11d
I had Doyle sails in Halifax make my new mainsail and stack pack. (sooooo worth it as a solo sailor omg) They did fantastic work and knowing I can get warranty repairs done all over the world is a good bonus. After sailing with a 40yo main and 20yo genoa the boat felt brand new with an unused and well stored 40yo 100% Genoa (for $500cad!) and putting on the new mainsail woah.
And yeah haha the boat is gonna be in a perpetual refit as I get more money to spend on it. I'll go with the Cape Horn wind vane since they're made near me, are internally mounted and can be ordered to be taller than my solar panels. Plus it supports using a tiller pilot mounted to the wind vane control rod so that way you can steer to a heading with nearly zero power draw as the steering power comes from the wind vane rudder.
Switching to electric is def something I'd consider although I may go with a hybrid system like they did on Tally-Ho. The regen feature would be amazing but in the meantime my 2012 yanmar will do and I can save up for a seawing towed hydrogenerator as it is the only option I can find that is designed from scratch to work between 3-6 knots.
Your battery setup puts my 400ah 12v house bank to shame hahaha You're charging off regen and solar I assume?
JayleneSlide@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11d
The most Wh comes from regen under sail. We're seeing about <2.0% hit on SOG when we turn on regen. Right now only 600W of solar panels. Even in the PacNW, our needs have been well-met year-round.
bergie@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11d
We're using Hoeken's Anchor Alarm running in Signal K. And then signalk-meshtastic to get the alarms also when we're ashore.
Not sure I'd trust a mobile app with all the power saving shenanigans phones nowadays do. And of course it wouldn't do anything when you're off the boat.
BevsDad@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 11d
Hmm, I have considered using Signal K since I do have it running on my Cerbo GX but leaving my n2k network on for position updates would use more power than my current setup. How good are the remote alerts on your sytem? That's one thing I like about mobile apps since they essentially sets a rolling 10 minute timer that rings at full volume (bypassing do not disturb and other settings) if you don't hear from the vessel phone for whatever reason. The vessel phone also always has the screen on although it has reliably works with it off with battery optimization turned off. For true anchor drag alarms I have both phone ringing full blast within seconds of me leaving the zone or the battery level going low.
The app I use lets me fully manage the anchor alarm remotely as well but Signal K would have the advantage of not requiring an internet connection even if that's rarely a factor for me. Meshtastic integration would also be nice but I'd rarely make use of it.
I often anchor in tight anchorages too so having the ability to precisely drop the anchor marker by pointing my phone inline with the chain + the chain length beats anything I could enter manually. No guessing as to where the anchor is located as I go down below to sleep after a long day of sailing.
Seems like yours also tracks other boats? That's pretty neat! But sadly around here no-one leaves their AIS turned on while anchored.
I do agree that most apps are terrible options as anchor alarms so that's why I spent a month testing multiple of them haha
bergie@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11d
If you get a USB GPS for the Cerbo, it'll work also with N2K turned off.
This anchor alarm supports positioning the anchor as you like, and you can do other shapes than circles for the alarn zone too.
We have speakers on board for voice alerts, but the primary mechanism is that the T1000e Meshtastic cards we carry start buzzing, sort of similar to those pucks some food courts give you.
BevsDad@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 11d
Pretty sure I'm out of usb ports on my Cerbo with all my mppt chargers/shunts actually. I don't believe they like dongles for the network cables but I might give it a try.
For dropping the anchor I mostly want the ability to use my phone like a compass and point it perpendicular to the anchor chain instead of guessing where the anchor might be on a map. So point phone(using compass bearing) towards anchor while power setting in reverse, pick a distance (chain length minus catenary calculated using this awesome tool) and you will have your anchor location within a few feet of the true anchor position.
Do you have a backup notification system for when you're outside of LoRa range?
bergie@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 11d
Cerbo works fine with USB hubs, we have several.
Backup to LoRa range, not really. Right now here in the South Pacific it is rare that both the boat and our phones would independently have internet. Though we get alerts also over Reticulum, and that can do both TCP/IP and LoRa, so theoretically it'd work (if the infrastructure was there). But in the atolls, LoRa range is plenty.