48 POWER & MOTORYACHT / JUNE 2017 WWW.PMYMAG.COM
or if one goes in the water—escalating siren sounds, spoken “Man
Overboard!” audibles, and strobing camera flashes take care of that
quite well—it is comforting to have a lively screen indicating that
everyone is OK.
If you read the full 2017 Pittman Innovation Awards report at sail
magazine.com, you’ll see that the Overall Winner judges were espe-
cially impressed with the CrewWatcher’s ease of use, to which I can
attest. The small orange beacons don’t have a switch or even battery
access. You just install the app, tap the “Add a PanPan” button, and
almost immediately you’ll be able to name a beacon with about as
much detail as you’d like. In fact, judging from the images on Pan-
Pan’s site—my beta apps don’t have the feature yet—you’ll be able
to add a photo of the person who will actually wear the 1.7-ounce
beacon around their neck or carry it in their pocket. According to
the company, it’s also easy to rename a beacon, or disable one when
you just want to keep a watch on others.
The prime enabling technology behind CrewWatcher is Bluetooth 4,
also known as Bluetooth Smart or Bluetooth Low Energy. It’s why the
beacon can be switchless even without a replaceable battery, and still
claim a three-year lifetime of “normal use.” And while PanPan has not
yet devised a beacon replacement program, I’ve seen a detailed battery-
life spreadsheet that suggests it might have a much longer real lifetime.
(That information should be available on PanPan’s site soon.)
When I began discussing the CrewWatcher with PanPan founder
Jason Schot last November, I was impressed with how much thought
his team was giving to false alarms. Bluetooth may claim ranges “up
to” 100 or even 200 meters, but that’s line-of-sight in an ideal envi-
ronment quite unlike the tangle of blocking objects and electromag-
netic interference that is a typical boat. And too many false alarms
can be the ruin of otherwise valuable safety devices.
There’s also a fundamental contradiction to an active wireless MOB
system like CrewWatcher. You want maximum range for minimum
false alarms, but you also want a real alarm process to start as soon as
possible, especially in cold waters and especially with a system like this
that can only capture the “point of loss” position (because the beacon
does not have its own GPS, and will be out of touch anyway). Besides
the many timing subtleties suggested in the beta settings and debug
screens (which real owners will never see), the PanPan team has come
up with three significant ways to deal with these issues.
First of all, the CrewWatcher beacon has a water-detection sensor,
and even the prototypes I’ve been testing are good at distinguishing
the real thing from dampness and spray. Water detection triggers
the MOB alarm routine when the Bluetooth connection is still ac-
tive, and imagine how much you might appreciate that feature if you
were being dragged off the stern by your tether. A think-outside-
the-box friend even theorizes that he could use a CrewWatcher bea-
con as a high bilge water alarm on his own boat or when he’s crewing
(see Roger Taylor’s wonderful Elements of Seamanship for advice on
how to politely check the bilges of any boat you leave a dock aboard).
Moreover, by the time the CrewWatcher beacons ship, hopefully
soon, the system will purportedly offer “meshing”—meaning that
all watched beacons and app-running phones/tablets will form
a network that allows the Bluetooth signal to find alternate paths
throughout. Also in development is a choice of Bluetooth power
levels, so a crew will be able to adjust the system to get maximum
response with minimum false alarms for a boat’s particular size and
composition (steel and aluminum boats will need more power and/
or more populous beacon/app networks). And if you can use low-
power modes, according to the battery spreadsheet even heavy use
shouldn’t flatten the battery thoughout its own lifetime.
Incidentally, other somewhat obvious uses for CrewWatcher, be-
sides regular person-overboard situations, include minding a tender
you’re towing or even an occasionally impetuous pet. (For instance,
my longtime boating companion, the springer spaniel Dixie Belle,
once woke up from an afterdeck nap, took one whiff of the seal is-
land close to windward, leapt overboard and swam about 25 yards
that way before realizing that she was being quite foolish.)
Meanwhile, I actually took one PanPan beacon, along with my
iPad and granddaughter, to a large demonstration recently, though it
turned out that she’s so smart she didn’t want to forge deep into the
crowd. So, beyond-the-box readers, how else could the completely
portable CrewWatcher be used?
As I mentioned, CrewWatcher’s audible and flash MOB alarms are
impressive (and work at full volume regardless of the device’s volume
setting), and so are the screens that help guide a recovery. While I’ve
yet to try it under way, I hope to soon, and it’s great that all owners
can do extensive testing easily and often: Walking simulations along
my boatyard’s docks were promising.
The point of loss in one test I did was about 100 feet from the boat,
which I think is realistic if the water sensor somehow stayed dry,
and the 380-plus feet I walked beyond that is about what it some-
times takes to get some boats turned around. The CrewWatcher app
guided me accurately back to the point of loss, near which I got theCrewWatcher is at its heart an app that uses Bluetooth-enabled
mobile devices (above) to track personal beacons (above right).