Harbour Master’s Tweets at Seawork 2013
Ohmex Ltd returns to Seawork this year with a focus on its new TweetM8 service to provide live PortM8 tide and weather information to marine navigation users via the Web or SMS using Twitter as the service provider.
TweetM8 recognises the value of such a service for small ports and harbours without a large IT infrastructure. The original request for a Twitter based service came from a navigation pilot working at a small port on the northeast coast of England and using PortM8 tide and weather instruments made by Ohmex.
The pilot occasionally had to escort a vessel when the harbour office was closed and there was no one to relay tide and weather information to the vessel as it approached the harbour.
The proposed solution was a web based application to view the data but this proved unusabledue to poor mobile signal reception offshore. The Twitter solution proved best as it was available for web based users and also SMS text message services over GSM, the 140 character message being easily understood and including basic information such as instrument location and the age of the data.
The measurements are based around the Ohmex PortM8 instrument. Parameters include tide height, water temperature, wind speed and direction, air temperature and barometric pressure. Calculated and derived parameters include significant wave height and wave frequency.
SOLAS 1974 is generally regarded as the most important of all international treaties concerning the safety of shipping. Chapter V covers the safety of navigation , part of which states an obligation to provide the mariner with meteorological services, usually interpreted to be the local weather and tidal conditions prevailing at the current time and location.
The primary concern of the authority responsible for marine navigation is the safe passage of vessels within its zone of control. Failure to provide the required information can result in collisions and groundings which could lead to loss of life, commercial damage and environmental disasters.
Twitter is a real-time information network service which connects to the latest information on any specific topic the user finds interesting. TweetM8 uses Twitter as the information provider service to distribute current tide and weather ‘tweets’ to all interested users who have elected to ‘follow’ a port or harbour’s particular TweetM8 account. The information can be viewed as a text on a mobile phone, on a smartphone, or on a PC by accessing the TweetM8 web service.
The TweetM8 gauge is a PortM8 instrument programmed to send an SMS text message over a simple GSM modem every ten minutes.
Ohmex intends to have a TweetM8 demonstration ongoing throughout Seawork and will be welcoming interested visitors to Stand SB137.
