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BoatBrains® is a project to design, manufacture, and market a line of recreational marine electronics.  It is no longer active, but not quite dead.  The design show on this web was done before NMEA2000.  As part of the process I contributed review comments to the NMEA2000 draft.  This project was in no way influenced by the NMEA2000 protocol of which I am not much of a fan. BoatBrains® still offers for sale its original one nanosecond "Grace Hooper" marine delay circuit for $1.00 plus handling and tax. Learn more at my consultancy website: www.padsoft.com

A.     Introduction

The BoatBrains® (pending) Cerebellum series is a distributed intelligence, network based, data collection and display system for the recreational marine market.  The system is targeted to racing sailboats and larger motor yachts.  The Cerebellum series is designed to be readily owner installed, expanded, and upgraded.   Key product differentiation is present in the state of the art hardware and software, high performance inter-node communications, the advanced display systems, distributed intelligence, and ease of installation and operation.

B.    System Overview

A Cerebellum Series system consists of one or more intelligent displays and one or more intelligent sensor modules.  The collection of displays and sensor modules is interconnected with a common network cabling system.  This modular approach allows a system to be precisely configured to provide the information desired. 

Because of the Cerebellum systems unique “plug and play” modular design it can easily grow in function by adding modules or displays.  The existing modules and displays recognize the addition of the new modules automatically and can adapt to use the new module’s functionality.

C.    Data Points

At the core of the Cerebellum systems plug and play architecture is the concept of a data point.  A data point is a single performance measurement.  For instance the current speed of the boat in knots.  An intelligent sensor module measures one or more such data points.  The module advertises which data points it produces, indicating the name of the data point as well as the units it is expressed in.  Both for system efficiency and user ease of use, the data points are organized into data groups.  The data points are grouped by common logical function.  For instance apparent wind speed and apparent wind angle are grouped together.  A module measures the all the items contained in a group and then transmits these values on the data bus as a single message.  The frequency of these transmissions is a function of the type of data within the data group.

D.    State Of The Art Software

The heart of the software system for the Cerebellum system is the Marine Instrument Node Operating System (MINOS).  This system provides a common set of software services for all sensor modules and displays in the Cerebellum system.  For the techies: MINOS is a ‘C’ based system using Windows style of message threading.  The MINOS system supports the CAN (Controller Area Network) hardware and the plug and play architecture.   For the rest of us it represents a solid tested system based on current technology and methodologies.

In addition to its flexible plug and play architecture, the Cerebellum system’s software is designed to be field upgraded.  As new features and functions are developed for the system it is possible to provide these improvements to existing installations.

E.     State Of The Art Hardware

The network hardware for the Cerebellum system is the Controller Area Network bus.  Bosch developed this advanced bus for control systems in vehicles.  CAN is a high performance (up to one megabit per second) error detecting and correcting bus system.  It is being rapidly adopted as a standard in a number of applications for trucks, buses, cars, industrial control and, marine electronics.   The Cerebellum system uses advanced electronics to effectively interface to the CAN bus.

Display

The Cerebellum System’s display technology provides large legible displays in a compact size.  The display is thin and has a flat back, it can be mounted on any flat surface without extensive work or cutting of the boat.

A single Cerebellum System’s display provides different views or pages of data geared to serve a number of needs.

This concept provides redundancy, flexibility, and versatility all at once.

Log - Depth Module

This intelligent sensor interface module shown to the right provides the base functions for most Cerebellum Systems.  This module includes a knot sensor, a depth sensor, and a clock. 

Apparent Wind Module

The wind sensor consists of a wind direction device and a wind speed device.  This device represents the state of the art for wind sensors.  Much smaller and lighter the units currently on the market yet even more sensitive.

Digital Compass Module

The digital compass module provides a solid state compass system with no moving parts.  This module provides the magnetic heading as well as the heel, and pitch of the vessel.

NMEA 183 Input Module

This module provides an interface from devices supporting NMEA 183 output.  Support is provided for both GPS and Loran system

Display Module

 The Cerebellum System’s display technology provides large legible displays in a compact size.  Using the latest in LCD display systems, “Chip On Glass” (COG) allows for the ultra thin display systems. Because it is thin and has a flat back, it can be mounted on any flat surface without extensive work or cutting of the boat.

A single Cerebellum System’s display provides different views or pages of data geared to serve a number of needs.  For example on a sailing club racer the driver, tactician, trimmers, and navigator all have different needs for a display.  As the boat tacks, gibes, and moves around on the course what needs to be displayed and who views a given display changes.  On the tower of a sport fishing boat the data of interest is different on the way to fishing, when trolling, fighting, and docking.  Down below it’s nice to know where the boat is going when it’s underway.  At anchor its nice to know the boat is not going. Cerebellum System displays can be easily configured to all these situations.  This concept provides redundancy, flexibility, and versatility all at once.

The following pictures are representative of the layout only.  The user has complete control to design any display they desire.  The data items being viewed could be any data item present in the given system in any combination.

To keep it easy to remember what is being displayed each item is displayed with its name and units of measurement.

A display designed to show the apparent wind angle and speed, the boat speed, and the water depth, all on a single display.  The fonts are clear and large enough to be read at 10 feet.  This one display provides enough information to effectively drive a sailboat into the wind in a competitive fashion -- without turning your eyes.
This display shows two values being displayed in the larger font.  These values can be read from over 10 feet.  Values with more characters like time, date, latitude, and longitude fit well with this format.
This display was designed with the navigation station below in mind.  It packs most of the information need when working with charts below into one simple display.

Knot Depth Time Module

This intelligent sensor interface module shown to the right provides the base functions for most Cerebellum Systems.  This module includes a knot sensor, a depth sensor, and a clock.  These items are sampled and data is provided to the rest of the system via the data bus.

The data points provided by the Speed, Depth, Time module are:

Advanced sensors (transducers) are an integral part of the Cerebellum series design.  BoatBrains offers a complete line of sensors accommodating the needs of demanding installation requirements.  Shown here are some of the most common units.  Contact BoatBrains for your special applications such as transom mounts.

Two types of boat speed transducers are available.  The first a traditional paddle wheel system provides actuate low draw readings.
The second speed sensor is a high tech ultrasonic system that uses sound waves transmitted into the water passing the hull and digital signal processing to correlate the signal into a speed reading.  The speed is measured a short distance away for the hull, beyond the turbulent boundary layer.  It has a fast reaction to speed changes, no moving parts, no fouling, and no drag. The sensor is removable for cleaning and storing.
The depth sensor is an intelligent retractable sensor allowing cleaning and replacement without hauling the boat.

Apparent Wind Module

A unique feature of the design is the use of digital intelligence within the sensor itself.  Data is converted to digital format for transmission directly on the data bus of the system.  This allows expansion of functionality without additional cabling to the sensor location.  For example a high performance racer might have fore and aft wind sensors.

Digital Compass Module

The digital compass module provides a solid state compass system with no moving parts.  This module provides the magnetic heading as well as the heel, and pitch of the vessel.

The Digital Compass Module produces the following data points:

NMEA 183 Interface Module

This module provides an interface from devices supporting NMEA 183 output.  Support is provided for both GPS and Loran systems.

The NMEA Input Module produces the following data points.  These are dependent on the connection of a NMEA183 device to produce the actual data.

Update: 03-Feb-2008