Sensory overload, or how I learned to ignore and love the alarms at the same time (and the sensors connected to them)

As is normal around this time of year, before the season gets going in earnest, certain boats that could not be attended to previously at the end of the previous summer are in the yard for service, repairs, refits and only too commonly dealing with pesky alarms that will require diagnostic time and fiddling about to resolve, or quite possibly false alarms due to failed sensors, faulty calibrations or various other parameters.

The number of messages received to the service department because of strange errors on screens or alarms with no meaning is huge. On most days these sorts of things would drive me crazy, leading to rants about useless sensors, over complications and we don´t need no stinking technology, however, I have been thinking about why there are so many sensors, alarms and warnings on boats, especially new ones.

Some possible reasons I have come up with are;

Protection from ourselves, this might sound odd, but when it comes to modern engines especially, there is such a myriad of processes going on at once that even experienced boaters (or technicians) might find it hard to keep up with, let alone seasonal boaters who might go months without being on board. These sensors are there working (hopefully) in the background, ensuring that every pulse of electricity and drop of liquid is monitored and used correctly. These sensors and their networks are there to ensure that even if you never even look at your motor, it is still being monitored, which is actually fine, they do not look at the electronic screens or pay too much attention to gauge values and whilst there are no alarms ringing all is fine, as long as the stereo and the fridge work, they just want to enjoy their time on the water. These people make excellent clients, they just want an easy time with the boat and pay whatever it costs to enjoy their time on the water.

The world in which we live, everything is connected and a lot of people have got so used to being reminded, poked, updated and managed by electronics that when there aren't any, they are somewhat discombobulated and out of their depth (nautical pun intended). There are a lot of apps available to connect you to your boat and its engine(s), some are really well done, usually the ones written to work with specific products or brands.

Product protection, as a manufacturer you need to give a warranty on new products, to avoid catastrophic failures and expensive claims, many sensors are installed in order to advise of impending doom and prevent it by reigning in the motor or whatever device said sensor is operating on. A diagnostic scan and replacing a faulty sensor is cheaper for the manufacturer.

Error - use meaningful variables

An odd heading, if you have never worked as a programmer those words will probably mean little to you, I will be forever grateful to my IT teacher, those words have echoed in my head for the last thirty odd years, they relate directly to how alarm messages are displayed and treated, simply saying, part "X,Y or i" is not working or "see dealer" is not helpful either to the user, technician or dealership that will get the telephone call, please, I beg of all marine engine manufacturers, do something about this, make error messages make sense, is it critical or non critical? do I have to be mildly irked or should I plan to abandon ship?

As of writing, some systems might say the error, maybe even have a code associated with it, other brands have their errors more closely guarded than nuclear launch codes. AI internet searches for me are very hit and miss on marine error codes, as they are not nearly as well published as those for the auto industry, the other issue is from a user point of view, little can be done without dealer intervention and their diagnostic computers, my previous post on diagnostic computers.

Essential alarms, the usual suspects

These are the alarms, coupled to their sensors that are non negotiable, you cannot be without them, they have been used for a very long time and will be familiar to many.

Any combustion motor, engine revolutions, temperature, oil pressure, these are the basic functions, oil pressure and temperature should have alarms for low oil pressure and high temperature respectively.

Battery monitoring, voltage on its own is not the best indicator, but it is the easiest and most common method of being able to trigger an alarm before batteries get too low to function or get damaged. Sailing yachts which could potentially be navigating for long periods without running their engines tend to be more ahead on battery monitoring over their motorboating counterparts.

High water bilge alarm, permanently connected to the batteries so it will work even if the main battery switch is off, some float switches have the ability to trigger an alarm, some systems have a separate switch just for an alarm, whilst on the subject of alarms, you want a seriously loud alarm, something that makes enough noise to wake the dead, or at the very least annoy other boats around and maybe get someone to complain to the marina staff. In my experience boats sink more often in their moorings than out at sea, in the marina it is likely there will be more people around to hear the alarm and alert someone.

This particular scenario is important to go into a bit further, I would recommend strongly that if you only have the option for one type of alarm, make it the old fashioned non digital type, run both types in parallel, I would not have a digital only alarm, as in you need to have the display on for the alarm to be working, oh yes, the sensor is sending a signal but there is no method of it to be heard, this sort of defeats the object unless you have 24 hour circuits for the screens.

One of the better systems I have seen, had both digital and "analogue" methods of bilge pump alarms, the digital system was connected to all of the bilge pumps except high water float switch. The other bilge pumps signals were on timers, the moment they operated for more time than the system trigger point, an alert appeared on screen, indicating the event and which bilge pump was running. The high water alarm was kept completely separate, its own siren and light on the dashboard, very smart, a side benefit of the way this had been done was if a float switch got stuck open, which does happen, you could deal with it before it ran batteries low.

CO (carbon monoxide), the silent and invisible killer, I cannot overstate just how bad this can be, as in fatal, if you sleep on your boat or have a generator on board, a CO monitor is a must.

In gear, more than once, I have had the unfortunate experience of failed in gear sensors, their purpose is to stop you from being able to start marine engines when they are in gear, when the fail, and you start the motor in gear, the results can go from a sudden scare to very dangerous as the boat jumps forward suddenly, not to mention the potential damage to gearboxes and running gear.

You dipstick

Quite apart from being a colloquial insult, this is the original sensor, it does not fail, it has one job and does it perfectly, its also the typically one of the first things we check, even if we are investigating a completely unrelated issue. The dipstick is being replaced by or has in addition a sensor in parallel, to check oil level and in some cases monitor oil quality, I am not going to lie, these sensors are another bane to my existence, a pain in my pushpit, for some reason they seem to have far too high of a failure rate or are extremely finnicky, so if the oil level in whatever the sensor is monitoring (gearbox or engine) is not within the extremely tight range, alarms galore come on.

I do not like to pull many comparisons between cars and boats, but this time I will, a few car brands have been silently retiring their engine oil dipsticks and probably gearbox oil too, in favor of installing sensors, in fact the first time in my entire life that I had the experience of the dreaded check engine light in a car was due to the oil level sensor, seeing as the mechanic was a mate, he let me stay whilst he plugged in the diagnostic computer, sure enough there was the error, the very first thing after the diagnostic scan, he got a dipstick, inserted it into a hidden sort of port that had a sign, workshop only and he manually checked the oil level, which was perfect.

I do wander if engine manufacturers might be in cahoots with boat designers, carrying on with oil level checks, which are basic and essential, and being able to do so should not involve boat yoga, losing half your body mass or any other great difficulties. Too many boats, especially sports cruisers with garages for tenders have only one way into the engine room, that's via the garage floor, this is okay except....you have to empty the garage first and lift up large panels to drop down into the engine room.

The only time when this is not a pain is when the boat is new and the garage is empty, I can assure you in August in southern Spain, emptying the tender, paddle boards, ropes and all the other paraphernalia that gets dumped in the garage becomes a very sweaty workout, perhaps they could add this test during an Ironman competition. This is where oil level sensors come in useful, but this is not an excuse for bad or lazy design, even if the boatowner does not go into the engine room, a mechanic or technician will and someone will be paying them for it.

Sensors in outdrives

The outdrive has been around since the late 50s and early 60s, Volvo first commercialized it, then Mercruiser & OMC (which later became part of Volvo), Yanmar & Yamaha have rolled the dice, even BMW once had one, not to mention Konrad who supply commercial and governments with them, its safe to say it is well proven and, in my (not so) humble opinion, the outdrive has been perfected, maybe some different materials could be used but the mechanicals and operation of it are solid and there is no need to make it more complicated, well, they have done.

Outdrive with cover removed, exposing the oil filter and sensor

I am not too much of a believer in just saying something is bad or putting products down, I do not see it as productive unless there is good reasoned argument behind it, and this time there is, what have you done Volvo? The once super sensible Swedes with their extra safe cars and sustainable furniture have seemingly gone overboard (yes another nautical pun, sorry), with sensors, they include, water in the bellows, oil pressure, oil level and quality, not to mention they are also guilty of the oil level sensors in their motors and pod drives too that are overly sensitive.

Another Volvo issue that needs to be pointed out, in my opinion a very serious one, trim sensors, for you see, if the trim sender fails and it thinks the drive is in the beach position, you cannot start your motor! (if anybody knows how to override this, please let me know and I will correct the post accordingly).

I am disappointed to be honest, very disappointed, Volvo was the de rigueur supplier of diesel motors with outdrives, okay, there wasn't much competition for a long time, but even when there was you still got Volvo, they have the biggest dealer network and boatbuilders installed them as they knew it was the standard. Volvo really is still the standard with diesel engines and outdrives but I really don't think they are doing themselves any favours, a lot of complexity, coupled to the sensors being extremely expensive and requiring the boat to be hauled to replace them.

All the while the powertrain is still under warranty you have no problems, Volvo in that respect are very solid and honourable, they will sort the issues out via their dealer network, you could start to have some expensive bills however after the warranty has expired. I am not sure of a solution, perhaps update the software to use different parameters, have longer times in error mode before throwing a code? As I said the outdrive has been perfected and perhaps Volvo have seen a need to add another layer of protection that others have not?

My door is always open

No its not, but the sensor in the side door, wing, garage, submersible bathing platform or whatever piece of boat architecture that opens or closes thinks it is, as a result it may or may not let you start your engine, fortunately most boatbuilders have contingency plans for such an event, they have overrides, so you accept liability and carry on, this is useful if you have a failed sensor, it is even more useful if you can silence the alarm too, this is not possible in all cases and it drives you crazy.

Probably the most common sensor type is a magnetic proximity sensor, a basic and robust sensor, I probably should not share this, but, I have bypassed countless sensors using a various magnets and bits of tape, this silences the alarm until a more professional and permanent solution can be made. More than one boatbuilder uses these sensors in transom doors that can be damaged or form part of the engine hatch, it prevents accidentally damaging the door or other components if the door is in the incorrect position when the engine hatch is opened.

Let the sunshine in (or keep the rain out)

Hard top sports cruisers are very popular, coupe style when you need it, open to the heavens when you want to get some vitamin D, great, that is until those electric sunroofs (which can be huge!), decide that something is not right and then will neither open or close. In fact it happened this very week, right on cue, one hour before the client was due to arrive to take the boat away for the season, the previous day everything had been checked for the second or even third time and, out of nowhere the roof got partially stuck open.

If I am honest, in the quiet moments, I will admit that the sensors in these roofs that slow them down when almost closed or open, stop them when they detect and obstruction or prevent them from doing something terrible when they shouldn't, are there for good reason, you cannot allow something so heavy to run riot, but, a method to manually close the roof is greatly appreciated.

Battery power

You must have enough of it, you would not believe how many technical support calls and interventions regarding alarms and weird things happening are resolved by charging or replacing batteries, which has a secondary issue, your batteries must be in excellent condition in order for a lot of sensors to work, low voltage causes all manner of errors, some of which disappear when the battery issue is resolved, just this week, I was looking through the alarm history of two separate motors, the number of low & critical battery alarms recorded was astounding. Any boat with electric steering is particularly sensible to low batteries.

This battery issue is not going to resolve itself easily, also this week, I have been working on a brand new boat, 26 foot bow rider, lots of kit in a small boat, that's just the way it is but, wait for it, five batteries, one for engine starting and four, count them, four for service including bow thruster, I think its too much, the poor engine alternator and the miserably small battery charger are going to have to work hard to keep up with the demand, the market demands so much "stuff" into ever increasingly smaller areas and all those extras need plenty of power.

Conclusion

Not all sensors are engine or mechanical related, okay it might be a stretch, some are monitors or switches, but I am lumping them into the same boat (another nautical pun intended). Why?, well the moment they are connected to anything electronic (such as a screen or module) they become a sensor as far as I am concerned, some will be useful, some essential, some just seem to be there for reasons only the manufacturer knows.

One thing is for certain, the age of the outboard is upon us, indeed, it has already been that way for a long time in some markets. When European manufacturers offer the same model, one with sterndrives and the other with outboards, the latter is gaining more sales, so much so, that some boats are now only offered with outboard power, the boatbuilder having dropped the sterndrive option, pod drives are a different story, but they don't face the same issues at the moment, mostly due to the amount of power you can run through them and the design of the boat remains elegant without having many outboards hung off the stern.

I know it sounds blasé to say ignore alarms, and, obviously I would never advocate you doing so unless you are absolutely sure. I would however advocate that alarms or warnings should be better implemented, simply telling you something is wrong without context is not helpful.

Although not a large movement, I know of quite a few boatowners who are either keeping their older boats or actively seeking boats with little to no technology, networks, sensors etc. If I am honest, I would include myself in that category, not because I can´t deal with the sensors and all the rest of it, I just don't think I want to.

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