Night Watch Deadman's Switch?

[Discovery 15797]

Agree with BelizeSailor, this is a pretty easy Ardruino project at less than 1/4 the cost of the Aqualarm sold at Fisheries for everything you'd need.

It's a pretty simple timer code, and easily customized to have different intervals for day time watches vs. night time watches.

[Russ]

Lots Cheaper,slightly different. Russ

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[SimonP]

Get a personal alarm like a Body Guard
https://www.seton.net.au/bodyguard-p...ht-a36739.html
Attach it to the tiller or wheel, or some thing secure where ever you are on the boat
Attach the pull out lanyard to your lifejacket
If you fall asleep, the position change will pull the lanyard out and activate the alarm
If you get washed overboard, the alarm, still on the boat, will wake anyone still on board
Cover it with cling wrap to ensure a big wave doesn't get it wet and deactivate it

[mikedefieslife]

The alternative is to have a large enough crew they you don't need to 'keep them awake'

It all depends on the boat, but something like a Lagoon 450 could very comfortably handle 4-6 crew members. Given 2h watches, no-one is going to be tired.

If you're on something smaller, then yes it difficult balancing numbers with resources.

Solo sail is best sail as Kim Jong Un would say

[NaClyDog]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

The alternative is to have a large enough crew they you don't need to 'keep them awake'

It all depends on the boat, but something like a Lagoon 450 could very comfortably handle 4-6 crew members. Given 2h watches, no-one is going to be tired.

If you're on something smaller, then yes it difficult balancing numbers with resources.

Solo sail is best sail as Kim Jong Un would say

I'm looking for something permanent, not just this sail. I do agree that having more crew would be best though.

[Reefmagnet]

You can buy a timer module and buzzer on Ebay for a few bucks and make your own. A small resistor and capacitor across the trigger to pulse activate the timing cycle on power up and a momentary switch to interrupt the power supply for the reset will do exactly what is required. Connect the buzzer to the NC output.

[Mike Banks]

How about a line clipped to your harness so that in the event of you going overboard or lying down a general alarm throughout the vessel is sounded?

[NaClyDog]

Originally Posted by Mike Banks

How about a line clipped to your harness so that in the event of you going overboard or lying down a general alarm throughout the vessel is sounded?

The PFDs / harnesses will have MOB devices. If someone goes overboard, the entire boat will know in short order (or so I've been told).

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

The alternative is to have a large enough crew they you don't need to 'keep them awake'

It all depends on the boat, but something like a Lagoon 450 could very comfortably handle 4-6 crew members. Given 2h watches, no-one is going to be tired.

If you're on something smaller, then yes it difficult balancing numbers with resources.

Solo sail is best sail as Kim Jong Un would say

Yeah. I've seen plenty of large crew boats with no one on watch during the day! There are good reasons these are mandatory under SOLAS.


These aren't just for MOB. They are for crew asleep or even just distracted.

[Culwatty]

https://pavlok.com/

Gives a fair jolt if you don't do the preset task

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by NaClyDog

I do appreciate the sentiment in this but since I will be subjected to the same rules, I'm confident I would fail to find the humour in it at 3:30am.


Cheers.

Hey, thats the great thing about software...add a "dont bother the Captain" mode!

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

When we were offshore I built one and it was a godsend. It beeped every ten minutes and if you didn't hit the reset button after two minutes it sounded the main ship's alarm - which would wake the dead.

When you DID hit the reset button it would shut the beeper (or alarm) off and automatically reset the timer for another ten minutes.

It was inspired by an incident off the west coast of the Baja when the watchkeeper fell overboard and was lost. Of course she then didn't rouse the off-watch crew (her husband) at the correct time and he slept in. She could have been up to six hours behind at that point and so impossible to locate. At least with my system it would be a maximum of 12 minutes. Still too long and so led to my idea for a man overboard system (not yet built).

Also inspired by my sleeping through a kitchen timer a few times.

There is a commercial MOB product which uses the limited range of BlueTooth as its activation mechanism. Each person has a BlueTooth device, if it goes out of range an alarm is sounded. Would be easy to add to this project.

[Nicholson58]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

You could have some fun w a project like this and make them do something different each time the timer expires....like press colored buttons in a certain sequence...would help keep the watch keeper awake...like the old "simon says" electronic game! [emoji6]

Whack-a-mole?

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Discovery 15797

Agree with BelizeSailor, this is a pretty easy Ardruino project at less than 1/4 the cost of the Aqualarm sold at Fisheries for everything you'd need.

It's a pretty simple timer code, and easily customized to have different intervals for day time watches vs. night time watches.

Of course...this assumes your time is free! Even relatively simple projects like this one can consume a lot of time! Just ask my wife! Who has been waiting several weeks for me to hang some pictures. [emoji57]

That said, this would be a good candidate for battery power and thus battery saving using "sleep" modes. I just built a propane tank level monitor, based on an ESP8266, which uses "deep sleep" mode . My initial testing shows that it should run for 41 days on a 1,000 mAh battery.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

Whack-a-mole?

Yeah!