Free boat monitoring · public beta
The old phone in your drawer can watch your boat.
Leave it on board, plugged in. Velamo watches shore power, the house battery, the bilge and your berth, and tells you in plain words when something needs a look.
Free for one boat. Android 8 or newer. No new hardware, no wiring, about 10 minutes to set up.
last change 09:12
Made for the boats most of us own
No superyacht required.
A cruiser on a pontoon, a day boat in the marina, a little yacht left all winter. If it has a bilge, a battery or a berth, Velamo can watch it.
On a mooring · coming later
No shore power or marina Wi-Fi out on the buoy, so moorings need a 12 V supply and a data SIM. We are testing that now. Then, if she drags or the pennant parts, you hear within minutes.
On a pontoon
The hub lives in the console and charges from the shore supply, so it knows the moment the pontoon trips.
What it watches
The things that sink boats in their berths.
Shore power
Knows the moment the pontoon supply trips, from the hub phone stopping charging.
House battery
Tracks voltage and how fast it is falling, so you hear before the bilge pump goes quiet.
Bilge pump
Counts pump runs and compares them with normal for your boat.
Berth position
A geofence round your berth. Drift out of it and you know.
Cabin conditions
Temperature and pressure from the phone, with the weather alongside.
The hub itself
If the hub goes quiet, that is an alert too, with what it last knew.
When something changes
Plain words, not error codes.
Every alert says what happened, when, how that compares with normal, and what the First Mate suggests. One button does the obvious next thing.
A push notification comes first. If nobody acknowledges it, Velamo sends a text, then tries your next watch keeper.
RUNNING OFTEN
in 10 min. Normal is once a day.
Never silent
If the hub goes quiet, you hear about it first.
A monitor that quietly dies is worse than none. The cloud expects a heartbeat from your hub, and tells you what it last knew when the heartbeat stops.
Watch keepers
Your berth neighbour already keeps an eye out. Now they'll know when to look.
Invite crew, a friend on the next berth or the marina office with a link. Watch keepers see status and alerts, not where your boat has been, and they never pay. It works both ways: put a hub on their boat and you watch for each other.
Where it started
Built on a pontoon in Plymouth.
Velamo started on a Hallberg-Rassy 31 at Plymouth Yacht Haven, built so her owner could know she was fine without driving down to check. It is in beta, so tell us what it misses.
Old Android phone in a drawer?
Give it a job this winter. Free while the beta runs.