A station at the dock. Sensors on the boat. You, anywhere.
DockNeighbor is a neighborhood with monitoring underneath it. Here is the whole thing: what watches the boat, how the news gets off the boat, and what happens at three in the morning when something is wrong.
The four moving parts
The sensors
Small, sealed, battery-powered. A leak sensor in the bilge, a voltage sensor on the house bank, a plug that notices shore power is gone, a GPS tracker. Each runs for years on its battery and talks by long-range radio, not Wi-Fi, so the bilge is as easy to cover as the saloon.
The station
One small box that hears every DockNeighbor sensor within about a mile and carries the readings to the cloud. A marina runs one for the whole facility. A boat can run its own. It keeps watching through an internet outage and catches up when the connection returns.
The app
Web, macOS, Windows and Android. The same view of the boat whether you are aboard or three states away: readings, history, who gets told, and your Dock’s conversation.
The watch
The cloud never has the app closed. It watches every reading, raises the alarm, reaches you first, and reaches the neighbors you chose only if the alarm keeps going and you have not answered.
On one picture
Sensors reach the station by radio. The station reaches the cloud. The cloud reaches you first, and your neighbors only if it has to.
Two ways to be covered
Every DockNeighbor sensor needs a station within range. Where that station lives is the only real choice.
Your marina runs a station
If your marina, yard or club has a DockNeighbor Station, your sensors are the whole install. Put them on the boat, scan them into the app, and they report through the marina’s station from the day you arrive. Nothing to plug in, nothing to keep online.
Boats that choose a station as their home earn its owner credits toward a free plan. The DockNeighbor Network →
Bring your own station aboard
The same box the marina uses, on your boat. Plug it into power and the boat’s internet, or use the 4G model with your own SIM so it needs nothing from the dock. The app sets it up in a few minutes. It travels with the boat and keeps the watch wherever you tie up.
M2 $99 · M2-4G $149. DockNeighbor Nomad: the station that travels with the boat →
The station never counts against your plan’s devices. Within range of more than one station, a boat’s own station carries its sensors and the marina’s is the backup.
What happens when something goes wrong
This is the part that makes it a neighborhood rather than a monitoring box: an alarm is not addressed to one phone.
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The sensor trips
Water across the leak probes, a float lifting in the bilge, a battery sagging toward the point where the pump stops, the shore-power plug going silent. The sensor reports it to the station within seconds.
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You hear about it, wherever you are
Push on your phone with the app closed, on every plan including Free. Paid plans add email; Weekender and Voyager add SMS and WhatsApp, and Voyager can place a voice call.
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If it keeps going, so do your neighbors
Five minutes later, if the alarm is still live and you have not tapped I’ve got it, it reaches the friends you marked. On Free and Dockside that is one of them; Weekender and Voyager reach up to five. A dragging anchor skips the wait.
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Somebody fifty feet away can act
That is the entire point. Distance is what turns a nuisance into a loss, and your dock is the one party that has never been far away.
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And on city water, the boat acts for itself
With a LinkTap valve on the dock hose (Weekender and up), a flood alarm closes the valve on its own.
What else the station reads
A boat that already has gear on its own network can bring it along. The station reads LinkTap valves, Shelly relays and meters, Starlink, and Peplink, Cradlepoint and GL.iNet routers, and shows them next to your sensors. Nothing is installed on them. Partner devices are on Weekender and Voyager, and each takes a device slot like a sensor.
The partner device list →Ready to see it?
Join free, invite a neighbor or two, and add sensors when you want the boat watched.