Some of us just want to know what's going on – and we want to know everything that's going on. We're the kind of skipper that Casey Cox (one of us captains, by the way) had in mind when he invented Krill Systems monitoring technology.
I stopped by his booth here at the Miami Boat Show to chat about the state-of-the-art in monitoring systems and he showed me a live data screen with the actual, up-to-the-second readings of a trawler moored in Washington State. I watched as the electrical monitoring system registered even slight changes in voltage and amperage and we watched the wind boxing the northeast quadrant of the compass at about 7 or 8 knots. Amazing capability, but that's not the half of it.
Cox says that using the Krill hardware and software, the number of systems that can be monitored is pretty much infinite. Each sensor pod installed below decks can handle the inputs of 10 individual sensors and these pods can be multiplied as many times as necessary, each feeding its data over standard Ethernet connections to a PC using the Krill Systems software. His biggest project so far? How about a 90-foot boat monitoring 90 different pieces of information.
Fundamentally, you can monitor anything that can be switched on and off; anything with a temperature or pressure; anything that collects volumes or weight; and just about every electrical characteristic imaginable. That means that batteries, chargers, inverters, shorepower connections and actual real-time usage can be carefully watched. And it's not just monitoring. If you set alarm trigger values for each sensor, the software will warn you of a violation of that trigger. For example, you can keep track of an exhaust elbow as a way of detecting a cooling problem before it threatens the engine. When you have established a normal operating temp for that component, you set that, or a little above that, as the warning level.
Other examples include monitoring bilge pump cycling, which can warn you of a subtle leak somewhere; monitoring electrical demand so you can tell the kids to shut off the hair dryer before they blow the shorepower fuse on the dock; or monitoring hatches, portholes and other hull openings for security considerations. As I said, the possibilities are nearly limitless.
When you order a system from Krill, you get a sensor pod, with all the connector cables to attach to your sensors, and the software, which you may use on as many computers as you wish. You can then scale your system up to meet your own monitoring appetite. If you don't want to use a PC to run the software, Krill will supply you with a Black Box option that can feed video in nearly any popular format to a "dumb" monitor anywhere you like. Watching the boat from home requires only a simple broadband Internet connection, which most customers make via a high-speed card that connects over their cellular carrier's data network.
Cox says that Krill will continue to improve and evolve the capabilities of the technology, with exciting new possibilities just around the corner. Upgrades to the Krill software are free. And since it can be scaled easily to extremely comprehensive levels, it will clearly satisfy even a whale of a data appetite.
KRILL SYSTEMSKrill Systems Monitor Display
