https://boatthing.com/ Recent content on Boat Thing Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us David Herring Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/2020/10/25/2020-10-25-boatthing-data-for-racing-sailboats/ Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/2020/10/25/2020-10-25-boatthing-data-for-racing-sailboats/ My boat, like most, has a NMEA network and a set of instruments that output data. I wondered what insights I might gain if I logged that data and analyzed it. Are there patterns? Am I sailing better or worse than I was thinking? I decided to find out, and built a hardware device that listens to my NMEA network and logs the data. Analysis of the logged data revealed interesting insights, and I hope to use those insights to sail faster. https://boatthing.com/2019/04/27/2019-04-26-minnebar-14/ Sat, 27 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/2019/04/27/2019-04-26-minnebar-14/ Boat Thing at Minnebar 2019 Boat Thing was presented at MINNEBAR14! Here are the slides. I’ll update with feedback and takeaways after the presentation. The gist used to render race courses is here. https://boatthing.com/page/contact/ Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/page/contact/ Contact us by email at contact@boatthing.com https://boatthing.com/2019/02/10/2019-02-10-hello-boat-thing/ Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/2019/02/10/2019-02-10-hello-boat-thing/ Performance and Fun Do you race sailboats? Do you want to go faster? So do we. Boat Thing is a project built by racing sailors with backgrounds in computing and mathematics. Boat Thing captures instrument data, uploads that data to the cloud where analysis yields insights and improved racing performance. Data Intelligence To understand how our our boat performs while racing we’ve created hardware connecting the boat’s wind, speed and geo-location sensors to a data pipeline supporting intelligent analysis of performance. https://boatthing.com/page/about/ Sat, 09 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/page/about/ Rationale The sensors on sailboats generate data which is used to feed displays on instruments. The data displayed on those instruments is often seen and evaluated in the moment it is generated but not typically used for analysis of how racing sailboat perform over time. Boat Thing is a project to develop greater insight of performance using sensor data output gathered over time. At a high level the project has these objectives https://boatthing.com/page/analysis/ Sat, 09 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/page/analysis/ Predicted Performance or “Polars” Polar plots and/or tabular lists of predicted boat performance are often used by racing sailors. These Polars are generated from a set of input parameters capturing the design of, and equipment aboard, a particular boat. A good explanation can be found here, and an example for an Islander 36 is seen here. Polars are predictions of performance in part based on a priori analysis. They are often used to judge how well a boat is sailing at any given moment by comparing observations displayed on instruments to plotted predictions of optimal performance. https://boatthing.com/page/data/ Sat, 09 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/page/data/ All Data All Race CSVs in a Single File All Comprehensive Data in a Single Tar File Data From Individual 2018 Races Lake Superior Yachting Association Offshore Series Houghton to Bayfield CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results Around the Islands CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results Bayfield Race Week Race Week 1 CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results Race Week 3 CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results Race Week 4 CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results Fall Series Fall Series Race 1 CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results Fall Series Race 2 CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results Fall Series Race 4 CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results Dobson Regatta Dobson Regatta Race 1 CSV JSON Raw Canbus Binary Yacht Scoring Results How The Raw Data Was Captured Data was captured by the hardware which read binary data from the CAN bus and saved the data in raw binary form to the disk. https://boatthing.com/page/hardware/ Sat, 09 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://boatthing.com/page/hardware/ The Boat Thing Project uses custom hardware that plugs into a boat’s NMEA 2k network. It is weather resistant and provides a WiFi access point providing connectivity. It is available in a limited release, contact us if you’d like to be an early user.