How it works
An old phone aboard.
A watch ashore.
The hub on board collects and forwards. The thinking happens in the cloud, so it keeps working when your phone is in your pocket and the boat is a hundred miles away.
Three steps
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1
Put a phone aboard
Any Android phone running 8.0 or newer. Mount it somewhere dry and plug it into shore power. Its charger is how Velamo knows the shore supply is on. Take the case off and keep it out of direct sun: Velamo caps charging to look after the battery.
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2
Set it up from a laptop
Plug the phone into a computer and open velamo.app/setup in Chrome or Edge. It installs the hub, which then shows a code. Scan it with your own phone and the boat is yours. About 10 minutes, once. After that the hub updates itself.
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3
Get on with your week
Check the boat whenever you like. If something changes, Velamo tells you what, when, and what it suggests.
Where your data goes
One way: boat to cloud to you.
The hub, on board
Reads the phone's own sensors. Only ever calls out, so there are no open ports and no VPN. Keeps readings while the marina Wi-Fi is down and sends them when it comes back.
Velamo cloud, London
Compares every reading with normal for your boat, decides what matters, and watches the hub's heartbeat so silence is an alert too.
You and your watch keepers
See the boat in the Velamo app. Alerts arrive as a push notification, then a text, then go to your next watch keeper if nobody answers.
Velamo listens only. It never switches anything on your boat or writes to your instruments.
Watching the watcher
Each layer covers the one before it failing.
Old phones, flaky Wi-Fi and aggressive battery savers are the normal case, not the exception. Velamo is built around them.
- 01
On the hub
Restarts itself after a crash or reboot, buffers while offline, and with a SIM can text you directly if it cannot reach the cloud.
- 02
In the cloud
A missing heartbeat becomes a hub silent alert that says what was last known.
- 03
In delivery
Push, then text, then the next watch keeper. Every alert records who was told, how and when.
- 04
Of Velamo itself
The service is checked from outside our own cloud, so if Velamo stops watching, we hear about it.
Privacy
Your boat's data stays yours.
Held in London under UK GDPR. Position history is visible to you and your crew, never to watch keepers.
The camera is off until you turn it on, and the hub always shows when it last took a snapshot.
A hub can only write its own boat's data. It cannot read your history or anyone else's boat.
Export your boat's data or delete your account from the app whenever you want.
Coming later
Raspberry Pi hub
The same hub software on a Pi, for boats that want a permanent install.
Instruments and sensors
Readings from NMEA 2000, Victron and Bluetooth sensors you already have.
Swinging moorings
A hub on a 12 V supply with a data SIM, for boats with no shore power or marina Wi-Fi.
Pontoon network
Shore power drops and gusts across your pontoon, shared only as totals and only if owners opt in.