What happened to the music?

One warm and beautiful afternoon while boating down the Atlantic Ocean from Ocean City, MD to Norfolk, VA, the radio starts cutting out. After 30 minutes of checking the wiring to the radio, amplifiers and speakers, we realized the batteries had become so low, they could no longer power the radio. While firing up the generator got the tunes blasting again, it would have been nice to receive a text message alerting us to the fact the batteries were getting low. This ensured that battery monitoring be a critical feature of the NautAlert system. Cellular connectivity in the case is definitely a requirement since there is no WiFi out in the Atlantic!

When the power goes out

The inventor likes to keep his boat in the water year round in the Chesapeake Bay where systems do freeze. One particularly cold week, an electrician turned the breaker off that fed power to the boat. As perfect storms happen, this triggered an issue with the wifi. The boat was outfitted with a system that required a NASA engineer to figure out and relied on WiFi. When the power went out, the WiFi also went down leading to no notification being sent out. With the power out and no notice, a water tank, water pump and two faucets bust from freezing. Obviously this is only noticed as you are about to head out on the water to enjoy the first spring day. This experience lead to setting the requirement that NautAlert be able to monitor two temperatures, have battery backup and have cellular connectivity.