Shop Talk

Daniel Harper Q&A Founder & CEO of Siren Marine talks with us about how marine products are beginning to take advantage of onboard data.

- Brian K. Lind

Last year we had the chance to meet Daniel Harper to discuss Siren Marine’s boat monitoring system. As mobile data plans have become cheaper, and access to the internet becomes ubiquitous, companies have gone all-in to develop comprehensive but simple-to-use monitoring systems. These systems gather and interpret the data spat out by the various instruments on your boat, and the term ascribed to such data has been dubbed the “Internet of Things,” or IoT for short. Here is a bit of our conversation with Daniel about how he came to monitoring, what makes Siren Marine unique, and what he thinks is the future of IoT in the marine world.

How do you identify the Internet of Things? How does the Internet of Things apply to the marine world?

Recall one of the early nicknames of the internet: “the information superhighway.” The Internet of Things is very much just that: it is information from our things or our stuff; like our cars and devices, that comes to us via the internet. At Siren Marine, we often describe ourselves as “bringing the Internet of Things to boating.” And we think that the marine application is one of the very best applications for IoT that exist. Why? Because folks love their boats. We generally don’t get as much time to use them as we would like. They are more often left untended than not, they are expensive and exposed to the marine environment. There are many key things we would like to know about our boats when we are not aboard, like battery state, leaks, and if the anchor is holding. The Internet of Things can bring all of this information to us via our mobile phone or computer. Voila.

What are the unique ways you have found to use the data from Internet of Things on boats that one might not immediately think of?