I had previously reported problems with my Text-Alert Boat Alarm. It would appear to be working, then mysteriously would go offline even to the point of total loss of communication. To fill in a bit of background information on this, it had always seemed silly to me that a traditional alarm might make a noise, but if the boat is moored in an isolated location, so what? The Text-Alert which sends an SMS message to a mobile phone when triggered seemed a much more sensible solution. If I was, for example, just spending the evening at the pub but out of earshot, there is even a chance I could do something about an intruder. If the boat were to be moored up in the marina, then at least I can telephone someone to check. You can buy similar systems for household applications much more cheaply, but the Text-Alert is designed for very low power consumption in a 12v system and thus suitable for mobile use with no shore power. The box is quite sophisticated and can be used for monitoring of, say, bilge water levels or controlling other boat systems like turning on the central heating remotely.
I had assumed that the problem with my unit was down to the unscreened wire I had used to connect the PIR sensor (it was a DIY installation). Not so as it turned out. The manufacturers of the unit have been most helpful in trouble shooting my difficulties even to the point of upgrading the unit to local wireless operation all at no expense to myself. The problem turned out to be due to the telephone modem entering an undocumented state under certain conditions of very low signal strength and locking the unit out. The solution to this was to fit an external aerial and to modify the software to deal with the modem problem. Fitting the aerial was done yesterday when I drilled a 12mm hole through the side of the boat and connected up.
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