Monitoring events on a boat

Community Projects
1

I have a small (21 ft) Ranger tug. Its a fun little boat, and Id like to add a monitoring system. I dont want to run wires all over the boat because it would be hard to do a neat job of hiding them. My idea is this:

  1. a rasperberryPI, with a 7" touch screen display as the main host, and the device to mount at the helm.

  2. several IOT boards around the boat collecting their data and sending it by wireless to the PI.

I think I want the PI to run a web server and be the wireless access point. I will create a web page that shows the data. I will run a browser on the PI that displays the page on the touch screen. I should also be able to connect to the server by my android phone.

What is the best IOT device to use? How should I run the IOT devices? do they get polled from code on the PI to send in their new values, or do they periodically contact the PI? Do I need to run some kind of data collector on the PI to read this IOT data? How do Put the data so the webserver can get it? Just have the IOT devices write to a file?

What would be the best IOT device? I need to read analog data, I want to monitor the voltage and current on the two main 12V batteries. There may also be some digital data, maybe engine RPM, or wind speed. Maybe even get into some GPS data, like distance traveled.

Is node.js something to use in this system? I’ve read some about it, but do not really see how it would work.

Thanks for any ideas on this- I am wide open to suggestions.

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Hi, I noticed you post although you didn’t get any reply’s, I wondered if you managed to get you project running? I’m looking at a project at the moment which I need to do a simular thing and maybe you could help me with your solution if you got it running?