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 foreign Jeff Cote here with uh boating Tech talk and today we're going to talk about uh boat monitoring so it's quite common for some of us voters to not uh be near our boats our cherished boats and to wonder how's my boat doing and that wondering how my boat doing could be do I still have Shore power uh how's my battery voltage what's the temperature in the boat what's the humidity like in the boat what are the loads on my boat how's my solar array doing these are all things I think that some of us certainly feel that we'd like those questions answered even though we're not on board or if the vote is a little bit further and it's not we don't have the convenience of checking on it every day like some owners get for you that might be interested in this sort of solution um victron offers a product that we've utilized on our own boats and have promoted on other boats and this is basically called the victron victron energy of serbo GX and it's a module or a black box that has a lot of inputs and the good thing about those inputs is they allow us the ability of providing connectivity to that module either over Wi-Fi which is nice so if your Marina has Wi-Fi that device could potentially log on and give you ability to connect to that device over the Internet or you might have starlink on your boat you might have a you might be able to even buy a cellular little module that provides internet connectivity directly to the module all right so let's back up a little bit I gave a little bit about the layout of the situation but here's where it gets really interesting so this module this victron energy a servo can have all these various inputs and one of these inputs which is worthwhile connecting which I did on my own mode as well is installing a smart shunt and we've talked about battery monitors before but smart shunts are basically a battery monitor without a display and so you can actually install a battery monitor a smart shot on your boat have that smart shot connected to the serbo and now you can see that locally uh you could use a bluetooth app to actually see what's happening on my Smart chant you can also get a display uh like what I did on my boat I have what's called a touch 50. you can get the touch 70 50 or 70 is basically the the diagonal um uh screen size right and so it's like a little instrument and that instrument gives you a really nice screenshot of what's happening in your boat at the moment like what's happening on Shore power how many uh what sort of wattage are you pulling from Shore power what are your AC loads in the moment and how much are you also using to either recharge the battery see what the battery voltage is what are the amps going in you can connect your solar controllers to this device I've done that seeing what each solar array is doing what your aggregate solar is doing seeing what the amps are and on top of it it's actually actually not only are you monitoring in real time which is nice but you have historical and the historical is really good to establish Trends see patterns because we're not always looking obviously at a serbo remotely and we're not always looking to see what the numbers are doing but you can actually see them historically so this is a really huge advantage of this serbo on my own boat my boat is hours away from where I live and and work and what I normally do is I actually literally check out on every day a couple times a day I'm looking to make sure that I still have Shore power because sometimes we do lose Shore power and if you're gonna lose your power you're gonna probably lose heat if you're gonna lose heat depending on where your boat is you might have problems with freezing water lines or through Halls so that might be one issue you also want to make sure that your batteries are not being discharged deeper than you want because we've had that happen to some of us for sure we've heard the horror stories where people lose their batteries because they haven't been on board for two three weeks they come back and their battery back is completely dead and as we all know trying to resuscitate a completely dead battery that has that below nine Volts for an extended period of time is going to be disappointing the battery's going to come back but it'll never be the same as it was before so in a nutshell that's basically what you're getting from serbo it's like the ability of being at your boat but doing it remotely and you do that via different connection devices we talked about Wi-Fi so if your Marine has a Wi-Fi or your boat has Wi-Fi then you could connect to Wi-Fi um you could connect via these different modules that a victron does for actually cellular connectivity directly to the serbo um or you could have on your boat potentially like I do on my boat a device a Gateway it could be uh like um there's different vendors Telecom providers give them different names but basically a let's call it cellular device to Wi-Fi you know it's like a little bit like a hot spot in our phones and what that's going to give you is the ability to log into that Remote device over the internet and that's huge the other thing too that I've done on my boat and we've seen other boaters do as well is actually monitoring not only voltage and Shore power but also monitoring temperature you know there are you can actually have uh Wireless sensors or wired sensors to actually monitor not only temperature on your boat which is interesting here in the Pacific Northwest because it sometimes does get below freezing but it could be measuring humidity seeing what the temperature is in your engine room and the monitor the servo does even more it does tank settings um I mean it's it's really the integrated black box that has all the different inputs now you might say Jeff I don't have a victron inverter charger on board can I still have this Servo and the answer is yes now of course if you have a victron inverter charger which I have on my boat it's a 3000 watt um yeah so now not only am I monitoring my systems on the touch 50 via a serbo but I'm also able to control and um my inverter so the touch 50 is a sort of a portal or the touch 70 is sort of a portal to everything related to victron now the more stuff you have connected to it obviously the more features but we've installed this on Motors that might have a xantrax inverter on board they might have a magnum uh Master volt and they don't have any sort of monitoring capabilities but they also want to have remote monitoring capabilities that's where the servo comes in so you can have a standalone sort of and we sell this as a kit a standalone serbo uh you're going to have the smart shunt you're going to be able to choose the screen size that you want 50 or 70. and so now in effect you're having a battery monitor but a battery monitor that can be connected to the internet that allows us as owners to be able to go on basically virtually on board our boats and confirm that all the things that we worry about are still there so that you know remove a little bit of worry and give us a little bit uh I guess less nervousness to come back on board the boat and hope that the batteries are all good every time we come on board for the first time after being away for a while so that's pretty neat the other thing too of course um some of us are going to make use of all the features that this things have like for example some of us are going to be looking at you know battery state of charge the shore power connection which I talked about the power consumption of your batteries how much are your solar array doing um you can even and this is gets even crazier it's not just monitoring and this is really worth highlighting I can actually have forgotten to turn on my charger when I left the boat and I can actually turn on my charger remotely I can disable an inverter remotely so because my victron inverter charger is connected to this serbo and because I have internet access to this serbo I'm now able to not only monitor situations but I'm also able to change and that's incredible because all too often some of us certainly forget to do do a certain important task and leaving an inverter on when you shouldn't could give you a lot of trouble and forget and turn on a battery charger could also be a big headache so being able to do both remotely turning on and off devices is one of the reasons why some owners and boaters are going to expand and say okay I've got the serbo up to this point but it would be nice to be able to control things and the way to control things is to have another victron device connected and on top of it if your solar controller is a victron you'll be able to actually go in there and see all the different victron devices that are connected to the serbo and actually go in there make sure that they've got the latest software that they're acting the way they should and so it's really a portal to everything related to The Energy System of your boat which is kind of neat the other thing too that's interesting is you can even set up alerts you can actually start alarming give a condition for example on my boat If I Ever Lose Shore power I'd like to know that you know I could lose your power because someone accidentally disconnects the shore power on the dock it could be loss of shore power because of a storm but whatever the reason I'd like to know because that means that now my boat and my refrigeration and all the systems on board are running off batteries and that doesn't matter so much when we're in the summer and we've got a huge solar array and maybe but now in the winter time when the sun's not shining as long or short and the sun's lower on the horizon the Solar Ray is not going to be able to help out as much as it does in let's say June as it does in January and so again the advantage of having alarms is getting a little bit of notification so that you know that if your batteries are starting to drain then you can start planning okay what am I going to do next am I going to go to the boat am I going to ask someone to go on board look at the shore power is the marina going to come and have a look so I guess it's trying to remove surprises and those surprises as we know can be very expensive and that's the advantage of getting that victron serbo kit is having monitoring and control depending on the type of devices you connect to it and do it all remotely so it's amazing if you've got questions or comments on how you've been using the victron serbo with your boat and what you like or dislike about it please put your comments down below sharing is caring and for all of you out there stay safe and hopefully this has been another way to remove some worries from being a boat order take care so if you're curious again go on our website and find out more answers and solutions with this sort of setup and thanks for asking and thanks for all of you for listening and tuning in English (auto-generated)