[IMAGE IS A PLACEHOLDER FOR NOW]

Know how your ship is moving, where it is, and what the weather is doing, all in one compact logger.

The VMR is a self-contained shipboard recorder built by a working mariner and oceanographer for the people who stand watch. It logs roll, pitch, and heading from an onboard motion sensor, timestamps everything with GPS-synced time, and shows the numbers that matter on a bright, dimmable display. There is nothing to install on the ship’s network. To see the full picture, connect your phone to the VMR’s own Wi-Fi hotspot and open the live dashboard.

The VMR is fully open source. The firmware, hardware design, and build documentation are free to use, modify, and improve.

What it does

• Ship motion. Records continuous roll, pitch, and yaw, and stores the maximum roll and pitch so you can see the worst of a passage at a glance.

• Roll period and stability check. Reports the felt roll period. It also estimates GM from the ship’s natural roll, which gives you an independent cross-check against your loading computer.

• Position and marks. Records GPS position continuously. Press a button to drop a mark for a CTD cast, a sighting, or any event, and add notes later. The marks hold for the full duration of a cast.

• Weather. Logs barometric pressure, air temperature, and humidity alongside the motion data.

  • Pressure: Absolute accuracy ±0.5 hPa. Relative accuracy ±0.08 hPa, both at 900–1100 hPa and 25–40 °C

  • Air Temperature: ±0.2 °C over 0–65 °C.

  • Humidity: 2 %RH over 10–90 %RH

• Accurate time, always. The GPS sets the onboard clock, so every record carries a trustworthy timestamp.

• Readable on the bridge. Multiple OLED data screens, a dimming knob for night watches, and status lights for recording, marks, and faults. A low battery is flagged on the fault light.

• Phone dashboard. A built-in Wi-Fi hotspot serves live data to any phone or laptop without an app or an internet connection.

• Everything to SD card. All data is saved to a removable card in open formats you can analyze however you like.

The VMR family

The VMR shares its core hardware with a family of configurations. The Deployment Logger uses the same base without the motion sensor. It is built for science teams who need to record exactly where and when instruments went over the side. The Weather Station is for people only interested in weather. The Inclinometer is for people who only want live data about the ship’s motion and estimated wave/swell height.

Under the hood

Adafruit ESP32-S2 Feather · BNO085 9-DOF IMU · GPS · real-time clock · SD logging · BMP388 pressure · SHT30 temperature and humidity · OLED display

Every VMR configuration is open source and built by Aspect Wave LLC. Open source on GitHub: https://github.com/sscopazzi/Vessel_Measurement_Recorder