What industry experts have to say about Krill Systems Vessel Monitoring

William Berlin, President

“Critical in my book, equal to or more important in instances, is the monitoring of areas that are affected by heat, or more appropriately, overheating. The owners that we see on a lot of yachts under 70' are just not capable of being in the Wheelhouse, Engine Room, Aft Deck, Fore Deck, general below decks, etc. all the time.

For that reason, to be able to monitor potential overheating areas [critical pumps, engine water and fuel pumps, exhaust elbows, genset temps, battery bank temps, etc.] is, in my opinion, a huge requirement.

If one is going to be a long endurance [distance] cruiser, this kind of thing is as critical as having enough fuel on board and can not only save costly repairs, but save both the boat and the lives on it.”

"Krill addresses what I feel is a serious problem on owner/operator boats where monitoring could be the fine line between life and death, or at least losing one's investment ... an engine room fire."

Failure Prediction

Industry leaders all agree that it is possible to predict failure of mechanical equipment before it actually occurs. Most mechanical systems such as pumps, alternators and rotating shafts exhibit gradually increasing operating temperatures caused by impending bearing failure or restricted pump flow due to blockage. Engine room cameras demonstrate smoke after the fact that expensive equipment damage has occured.

Prevent expensive catastrophic failures
Avoid unscheduled downtime
Schedule preventative maintenance only when needed
Reduce operating costs

Air temp sensor

With a historical sensor data logger, the vessel operator can predict impending problems with the ability to quickly spot trends in equipment operating conditions.

Examples of this may be the engine coolant temperature slowly increasing over time, indicating a possible clogged heat exchanger element.

Equipment failure is often the result of series of cascading events that is caused by other conditions.

Temp Ring Example Another example of the benefits of having sensor data recorded is spotting impending problems such as during a shore power outage. Shore power outages may cause the house battery bank to discharge, which in turn prevents the bilge pump from operating correctly. There are many example of cascading events which will be documented with Krill Gen3 & Krill SmartTug NMEA 2000 database software.

The root cause of equipment failure can easily be traced back by examining the sensor data logger.