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Boat instruments that collect wind info and water temp are pretty common. The sentences I can think of are MWD - wind direction and speed, and MTW - water temp. I'm not sure if there are any that use the WX strings, or if there are any NMEA sensors common to boats that will measure rain, humidity, air temp. Some of the newer ones may do barometric pressure.<br><br>I'm looking into the possibility of using a Sheevaplug or some other low-power Linux box coupled with a USB LCD to serve as the interface on my boat and provide some additional calculated functions. Having started Sunday, and not having used C or C++ in the last 6 years, I've already got a program parsing a few NMEA strings from serial input, and able to handle input from multiple streams. This should make it easy to save peak gust info and average wind speed/direction, instead of just pushing out the immediate wind speed/velocity. The Sheeva board itself (main board and daughter board for SDIO and mini USB plug) is a clean, small board that looks like it draws only 5W or so; most of the bulk of the wall wart looks like it's for the power conversion. <br><br><br>An NMEA interface to APRS may exist, but the subset of boat owners with Seatalk networks that would want to broadcast APRS weather has to be a small pool. I have a spare E85001 Seatalk-NMEA interface if you're interested.<br><br><br><br>I'm also considering putting this (low-power Linux device + USB LCD) together as a mobile APRS solution.
For about $200 in parts it would have an LCD with 7 key keypad, ability
to use a USB keyboard - or heck Bluetooth would be easy to add, too - for messaging, and depending on the radio it might be possible to add control features to it as well. Kind of a generic RC-D710, but extendable, and with a lot more horsepower available. Might be neat to add text to speech, or the ability to use a cell phone link to the APRS-IS stream for internet-only WX, or real time traffic, or all kinds of possibilities. First things first though is handling APRS data streams and writing a basic menu system for the LCD. <br><br><br>Kevin<br>KB3PLX<br><br><br>From: aprssig-request@tapr.org<br>Subject: aprssig Digest, Vol 57, Issue 3<br>To: aprssig@tapr.org<br>Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 12:00:02 +0000<br><br><pre>Send aprssig mailing list submissions to<br> aprssig@tapr.org<br> <br>To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit<br> <a href="https://www.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig">https://www.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig</a><br>or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to<br> aprssig-request@tapr.org<br> <br>You can reach the person managing the list at<br> aprssig-owner@tapr.org<br> <br>When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br>than "Re: Contents of aprssig digest..."<br></pre><br><br>--Forwarded Message Attachment--<br>From: dskolnick@gmail.com<br>To: aprssig@tapr.org<br>Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 10:07:09 -0500<br>Subject: [aprssig] APRS - NMEA interface<br><br><pre>Has anyone implemented (or found commercially) an interface between<br>either NMEA 0183 or Raymarine SeaTalk and APRS? I'd prefer not to have<br>to leave a computer running all the time. The idea is to have the<br>information on my boat's navigation network available to a WX APRS<br>station on board. I have a radio and KPC-3 I can devote.<br> <br> <br></pre><br><br>--Forwarded Message Attachment--<br>From: scott@opentrac.org<br>To: aprssig@tapr.org<br>Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 07:21:11 -0800<br>Subject: Re: [aprssig] APRS - NMEA interface<br><br><pre>Most APRS trackers and things speak NMEA 0183, but typically only the <br>RMC, GGA, GLL, and WPL sentences. Is your navigation network providing <br>WX data? With what sentence(s)?<br> <br>Scott<br>N1VG<br> <br>Dave Skolnick wrote:<br>> Has anyone implemented (or found commercially) an interface between<br>> either NMEA 0183 or Raymarine SeaTalk and APRS? I'd prefer not to have<br>> to leave a computer running all the time. The idea is to have the<br>> information on my boat's navigation network available to a WX APRS<br>> station on board. I have a radio and KPC-3 I can devote.<br>> <br>> _______________________________________________<br>> aprssig mailing list<br>> aprssig@tapr.org<br>> <a href="https://www.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig">https://www.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig</a><br>> <br>> <br> <br> <br> </pre><br></body>
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