Recently, I had an opportunity that I ironically and with a dose of shame called “parental leave” (the father leaves the family, yeah) — the chance to go on a sailing trip from Egersund to Stavanger and back to watch and take photos of the ships participating in the Tall Ships Races 2026 as they were departing Stavanger. While I failed to get the photos I wanted because of the elements, the overall trip restored my motivation to move forward with a particular DIY project I started in 2021 but had to drop when I moved to Norway.
And as I plan to occasionally write about this project, I want to introduce it to those who are not aware of it.
Idea and motivation behind it
I call it the “Vega boat tool”. Basically, it is an integrated assistant working in addition to the navigational system, and covering some use cases that I miss. I will definitely share more in future posts, but here are some core features:
- I want to have good remote monitoring of the boat. I’ve seen the consequences of missing awareness many times: sailboats after fires, smashed hulls because of broken mooring fairleads, or the bows of boats sticking out of the water after they sank right at the berth because of failed seacocks or undetected leaks.
- My recent trip finally highlighted how important it is to consider sea currents and swell on relatively long sailing trips, especially with such a small boat as Marieholm 26. Before, in the Baltic Sea, I never regularly experienced such uncomfortable conditions caused by swell and currents, and basically the only factor I had to consider was the wind. Now I need both good forecasts and active monitoring of these elements during sailing — and it is not that easy to get this data quickly available in the systems I use. Also, I simply miss the well-known “conning display” found on the bridges of large ships, which aggregates information from multiple sources about vessel motion (COG, SOG, etc.), the schedule, and so on. It is good to have a second display specifically for this purpose, so the navigational screen does not become cluttered.
- In the conditions of the rough North Sea, I miss short-term planning: notifications that the weather is good for sailing around Eigerøya this evening, for example, or for making a longer trip to Hydra Island next weekend.
- And actually, I like making trip reports with infographics, almost like a personal photo album for keeping my memories. “Here I made a circulation to give way to the ferry, and here you can see how severe the swell became.” Of course, a screenshot of the track is insufficient for making something like this.
Sadly, it is almost impossible to add navigational charts in the way I want because of multiple factors that a single person is not able to cover. If it were possible, I would definitely try to make my own navigational system, but I am already too ambitious with my available resources, and this is completely out of scope.
Of course, multiple systems and apps cover all these use cases, but my professional deformation as UX designer and of working for more than 10 years with professional maritime systems, together with my personal interest, drives me to try making something that reflects my thoughts about what good user experience is. At least for myself, I don’t like switching from one app to another; I don’t like exporting and importing routes just to get some extra weather parameters that I miss; and even popular integrated systems (which are also too expensive for me) don’t always work the way I want.
And actually it is a critical point: I am not that interested in something that sophisticated in engineering or level of development, more prototype, but I just want the stuff to be as conveniet as possible for my own usage. As there is no other customer, no arguments about priorities and resources, and no commercial or other “real job” factors, the only limitations are myself and time. It is an interesting experiment to test myself and play with.
Probably, if I succeed, it could also be a nice project to share with other owners of old, inexpensive boats who miss modern integrated systems: a DIY project based on inexpensive components that almost any Arduino/Raspberry Pi hobbyist could reproduce.
General conceptual architecture
I’ve been considering multiple options, and the current idea for the implementation of the Vega tool is the following:
- There are several data collector devices (DCDs) based on ESP32 that collect and share information from multiple sensors and other sources, such as an AIS receiver or wind meter.
- The information is sent both to the cloud and to the local multifunctional cockpit display via an onboard LTE modem.
- Because of the limited power capacity of my boat (I still have no 220V shore power and therefore rely heavily on fairly low-power solar panels), some of the DCDs are to be turned on only when I am onboard, but the most critical information (such as water leaks, accelerometer data, battery condition, and so on) is to be collected and shared with the cloud all the time.
- There is also a simple web server that I am going to use when I am not onboard, and that my relatives and friends can access to see my progress and conditions when I am sailing alone. It can also generate alerts and actively notify me if something is wrong.
- And finally, there is going to be a connected desktop application that I can use for planning future trips and analyzing past ones. It can also serve as some kind of personal archive for routes, tracks, and so on, including data from other systems such as Navionics or iSailor.
All the physical devices are going to be designed and 3D-printed with usability considerations in mind, so it is also an effort to try myself in industrial design.
This is especially critical for the cockpit display. It must support both bright daytime and dark nighttime conditions, including a red color palette that does not affect night vision. I want to avoid using a touchscreen for interaction because it is not very comfortable to use under severe rolling or when it is raining — another interesting task for me after designing physical keyboards and control surfaces for maritime radars and medical radiology equipment.
I also want to make it relatively compact, as I don’t have space for an embedded display in the cockpit, so I can easily mount and remove it.
Current status
I have already tried making some parts of this tool — mockups, algorithms, and even a real DCD that worked onboard for several months — as a proof of concept.
Because I am not a software developer, I had to learn some stuff — sufficiently enough to try making this tool. Luckily, since 2021, AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude Code have arrived, and they help me a lot with getting answers to most of my development-related questions.
This means that at this point I am ready to try making the first working version that expresses some of my ideas, and this is why I decided to make the project more public.
Of course, it will take time, and there is a high chance that external circumstances will again affect the continuation of the project. But I have more confidence and motivation now, so I think I will be sharing more details about the project and my activities around it pretty soon.