HomeAssistant integrations for a boat

Feature Requests
1

More integrations are needed for boats. Some people live on-board. So it’s their home.

A boat has more sensors than average home. They use fairly standardized protocols (NMEA 0183, NMEA 2000, SignalK). Should be easily detectable for an integration.

Needs of a live aboard person whose boat is a home:

Energy production and usage monitoring. Solar/Wind/Batteries. Victron Systems.

Tank Levels (Fresh water/Fuel/Septic tank/Blackwater tank)

Appliances AC/Fridge/Heater

Engine monitoring RPM/Temp/Oil pressure/temp Fuel Usage.

Location/Navigation/Charts

Weather Forecasts/GRIB/NOAA satellite

Marine Radio/Radars/AIS

Satellite Internet.

I’ve created a BBN Marine Linux OS Distribution which does include HomeAssistant. (More here: Bareboat Necessities OS Documentation)

I’d be interested to improve. HomeAssistant is promising for a boat but so far falls quite short of what is possible or even basics needs.

Thanks,
–MG

2

Other than the NEMA messages, none of that is specific to boats. You could sniff the NEMA messages with an ESP and the ESPHome UART component.

There used to be a Youtuber that lived on a yacht and posted home assistant videos but he has stopped and taken the channel down.

3

@mgrouch :wave: Guides for quite a few of those on:

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4

Have you seen this:

https://bareboat-necessities.github.io/my-bareboat/bareboat-os.html

Thanks

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5

I have! Very cool project. I do a lot of the same things - started on an RPi but eventually switched everything over to an Intel NUC. I’ve been pretty impressed with how well I’m able to make HA work on board / integrate with marine systems, so far.

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6

There used to be a Youtuber that lived on a yacht and posted home assistant videos but he has stopped and taken the channel down.

I always wondered what happened there. I found his videos really interesting. He was even interviewed for a HA blog. Then just disappeared.

8

I just saw your posting, only today.
I have been living full time on a boat for 6 years, and have been running a local Blynk server for all my IoT needs, until recently. The Blynk folk have decided to stop supporting a local server and have con into the cloud, which is no good for me on a boat as there will be times that I have no access to the greater internet.
I have looked at Home Assitant in the past, and I am giving it another go now. As I’m in a river I don’t need all the marine navigation things, however, as I’m 100% off grid, I need to monitor power usage, solar, and many other environmental measurements.

Cheers.

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9

How about this… I have HA running in a Overland Rig… I just realized the M2000 5G device I have sends out GPS data in the form of a National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) text stream. So now I’m trying to see if HA has an add-on to interpret the data for use within HA.

I have some tasmotized s31 plugs(@andresk ) they are good to monitor power once calibrated with a killawatt meter. The bmax mini pc has dietpi with ha and others running. the 4chan pro for exterior lights, compressors and inverters work well with the many 8266 on the car.

now… once i get this alpicool into HA(its looking like other fridge manufacturers have the same Bluetooth coding standard as they can all use the same app), maybe even a WARN industries winch or ANTIGRAVITY batteries products to fully integrate id be a happy overlander!

Exciting times folks… exciting times!

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10

Hi did you advance in your project?

11

He cancelled all the videos too?

12

Can you please share something. I am quite expert in Home Assistant, having started many many years ago, but zero experience in applying Home Assistant into boats.
. Just got me a boat (with Garmin, Víctron, Fisher Panda generator, solar panels, Shenker water maker, and others. Ah and a Hikvision camera)

13

New version (2024-03-10) of BBN Marine OS includes integration with NMEA TCP for HomeAssistant by

Link to BBN Marine OS project home:

Look for “HomeAssistant” in the Getting Started Guide to see how to enable integration with NMEA.

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14

Interesting topic. I have nothing to add, but I’ll be watching. I have floated (vbg) the idea of buying a boat to do the Mississippi loop.

15

I have over 30 videos on Smart Boat topics using Home Assistant. I also develop Boat specific Home Assistant Integrations.

This is a summary video:

And the Channel:

Smart Boating

2 Likes