OutboardView
Boating Industry Canada
OutboardView is a new app from Digital Yacht designed to allow a smartphone or tablet to display engine data and calculate optimum efficiency.
Fuel economy while boating is a major consideration with a modern 300 HP outboard consuming around 100 l/ph at wide open throttle. Small changes to trim or RPM can make a massive difference to the optimum economy plus sea state and weather are also variables which constantly impact the “sweet spot”
Most modern outboards are now fitted with a NMEA 2000 interface. Digital Yacht have developed an Android phone and tablet app called OutboardView designed to show all the current engine parameters such as RPM, boat speed, oil temp and pressure as well as calculating optimum fuel economy with an easy to understand trim gauge - make your trim and rpm adjustments and get a realtime view of fuel efficiency. It’s designed to integrate with Digital Yacht's iKommunicate NMEA to Signal K gateway so data can easily be picked up from the NMEA 2000 backbone.
The system can use speed data from either the boat’s navigation system or from the GPS which is built into the phone or tablet. On many engine based systems, speed comes from a paddle-wheel which can be inaccurate especially at high speeds so the use of GPS speed readings provides a much more reliable solution.
OutboardView is available to download on the Google Play Store for $14.99 USD. Further details on the iKommunicate general purpose NMEA to Signal K interface are at www.digitalyachtamerica.com
Originally published here.