Ohmex Seawork Tweet demos
Live tidal and weather tweets on Twitter from a dockside Tweet M8 tide gauge were among innovations featured by Ohmex at Seawork.
Demand for such a service, the Hampshire company said, originally arose from requests by a navigation pilot at a small port in the UK for real-time information while escorting incoming vessels whenever the harbour office was closed. With web-based methods for viewing data proving unusable due to poor mobile signal reception offshore, the Twitter solution provided the best alternate means, with 100 character messages over GSM being readily understood whilst including basic information such as instrument location and time of data.
Other prospective users of the method cited by Ohmex’s Ted Reed include commercial shipping mariners, leisure sailors, harbour masters, workboat crews and coastal and estuary fishing combines.
Elsewhere, the company also reported the recent installation of two automatic AtoN (aid to navigation) systems jointly developed with L-3 Communications for use at the Northern Ireland fishing port of Kilkeel in a project carried out with Martek.
