One helm for every system aboard — energy, range, chart, cameras, circuits, weather, audio and
internet — and a native app that puts the boat in your pocket. Aboard over the boat's own WiFi. Away over the cloud.
BoatPlay runs on the boat computer and shows itself in two places: the Helm
at the wheel, and the BoatPlay app on your phone. Same data, same alarms, same rules — sized for where you are standing.
Helm · Tablet or desktop at the wheel
The Helm
The full display — a fixed, no-scroll layout with glove-sized targets, three colour modes for sun, dusk and night vision,
and every page one tap away. Runs from the boat computer over the boat LAN, works with the network off, and the interactive demo below is the real thing.
The same helm in a one-handed, six-tab layout — plus what only a real app can do: push alerts, Face ID or fingerprint before any
switching or anti-theft action, and a splash that always opens on the boat. It knows where it is talking from and says so on every screen.
ABOARD — boat WiFi: live instruments, battery and range, chart with AIS, cameras, and switching for non-critical circuits, straight from the boat computer. Works with the satellite link down.
AWAY — cloud: state of charge, charging and ready time, position, camera stills, trip history, push alerts, geofences and immobilise requests.
Per-phone credentials, read-only by construction; revoke a phone from the fleet dashboard and it is out in under a minute.
Every feature below is built, tested and running on the bench.
Not a roadmap. This is the current BoatPlay release, page by page — the Helm and the phone share one codebase, so the phone
keeps what a phone can do well and drops what belongs at the wheel.
01 · Instruments
Depth, speed, heading, trip log
Glanceable numerals sized for the helm position, updating live from the boat's Signal K feed. Stale or missing data is dimmed and dated — never faked. Trip log resets with a two-tap confirm.
HelmPhone: depth + speed
02 · Chart
Chartplotter with AIS and collision warning
Follow-boat own ship with COG vector and track, AIS targets with CPA/TCPA warnings that also ride the alarm banner, a range ring, routes and waypoints by touch, an offline base map and a radar overlay shortcut. Lazy-loaded, so the helm still boots in under a second.
HelmPhone: go-to pin + saved routes
03 · Energy & range
Range to home, as advice
State of charge with pack vitals and derating, power flow for motor, solar and shore, solar yield today — and a range engine that answers at several speeds: reach the ramp with 20% in reserve at 6 knots, or 8% at 12. A turn-back alarm fires once, at the last moment you can still turn around.
HelmPhone
04 · Switching
Digital switching, two taps
Every circuit on one page with live state and per-circuit current, grouped by bank. Critical circuits ask for a confirming tap. The phone can never see, let alone command, the propulsion bank or the main contactor — the physical panel stays the path.
HelmPhone: non-propulsion only
05 · Cameras
Four feeds, plus the stern in the corner
Quad grid or one feed full screen over the boat LAN, with CONNECTING / LIVE / NO SIGNAL badges and a no-signal watchdog. The stern camera docks as a picture-in-picture over any page, including the chart. Away from the boat: bandwidth-capped stills so a camera never starves the satellite link.
HelmPhone: one feed, stern thumbnail
06 · Weather
Forecasts, buoys, tides, alerts
Official NWS marine-zone forecasts verbatim with the agency's issue time, inshore and offshore buoy conditions, sea state, predicted and observed tides, and marine alerts that interrupt as banner and push. Every tile carries a source-and-age badge. Cached aboard — a dropout costs you nothing.
HelmPhone
07 · Audio
Zones, sources, and music that ducks for alarms
Per-zone volume and mute, a source picker, transport controls, and a duck banner: when an alarm sounds the music drops. The amplifier shows up on the energy page as the load it is. Control it from the helm or your phone; away, commands relay through the cloud.
HelmPhone
08 · Internet aboard
Link health, data plan, guest WiFi
OK / OBSTRUCTED / OUTAGE — BoatPlay tells "no internet" apart from "the dish cannot see sky". Data usage against your plan on the helm and the phone. Guest WiFi is rotated from settings and is isolated from the control network by an OpenWrt configuration we verify with a test, not a promise.
HelmPhone
09 · Alarms
One banner, above everything, everywhere
Threshold rules per signal with warn and critical bounds, escalation timers and automatic re-arm. An unacknowledged critical escalates to your phone as push, queued durably through outages. Colour carries severity; the words are a three-word headline and one detail line. Full history on the settings page.
HelmPhonePush
10 · Security
Geofences and immobilise requests
Draw circular geofences from the app; the boat enforces them from a cached copy even with the cloud unreachable, and a breach is a critical alarm and a push. An immobilise request is exactly that — a logged request with an explicit confirmation, never an instant cutoff.
Phone · awayFace ID gated
11 · Trips & history
Every trip, detected and kept
Distance, duration and net energy per trip, with the track drawn and a share-link you can create, list and revoke. On board, one second telemetry for seven days and hourly rollups for a season; in the cloud, per-boat row-level security so one boat can never read another.
Phone · awayCloud
12 · The platform
Offline-first, over-the-air, open standards
Signal K and NMEA 0183 / 2000 data, a documented data model, a bench simulator that plays whole scenarios, signed staged-rollout OTA updates, a support view with an owner-readable audit trail, and a 90-day retention policy written down and enforced by a job — not by good intentions.
EdgeCloudFirmware
Mission modes
One tap puts the whole boat into a mode.
A mode is a recipe applied once over the systems you already have — circuits pre-armed, alarm profiles swapped, the display
set — and your own adjustments afterwards survive. A recipe can never touch propulsion, never switch the bilge pump off and never mutes an alarm.
FISHFishing setup — livewell, deck lighting and the cockpit view.
CRUISEUnderway setup — nav instruments, underway audio and the chart.
DOCKDocking setup — the stern camera and the instruments view.
ANCHORAnchored setup — anchor watch and a quiet helm.
AWAYAway setup — the boat watched from the cloud, non-essentials dark.
NIGHTA layer over Fish or Cruise — red-shifted helm, dimmed shell.
Live demo
This is the Helm. Go ahead and touch it.
A simulated day on the water, running the real helm software. The ring on the chart is the furthest point you could still turn
back from with a reserve in hand — it moves with the wind, the tide and the speed you pick.
The BoatPlay app for iPhone and Android. Aboard, your phone becomes a second, portable helm over the boat WiFi. Away, check in from anywhere over the boat's encrypted cloud link. Push alerts for the things that matter; Face ID or fingerprint before anything that changes the boat.
Requires a BoatPlay-equipped boat. The app cannot start, stop or limit propulsion, and every critical circuit keeps its physical control.
Register below and we will tell you the day the listings go live.
BoatPlayABOARD · BOAT WIFI
FISHCRUISEDOCKANCHORAWAYNIGHT
Battery · house pack
78%READY · 2h 10m
Range home14.2nm
Reserve at 6 kn21%
Depth18.4ft
Speed · SOG6.4kn
AlarmsNone active
HomeChartEnergySwitchCamerasMore
BoatPlay is an information and convenience layer. Propulsion, steering and cutoff never depend on it.
That is a design rule, not a disclaimer. The boat computer can crash, reboot or lose the network and the boat still drives,
still steers, and every critical circuit still has its physical control. The software earns trust by being honest about what it is.
The phone never commands propulsionNor the main contactor. Those circuits are filtered out before anything renders; biometric failure can never block a hardwired path.
Protection lives in hardwareOver-current trips in the switching node itself, and a node that loses communication goes to a documented failsafe state — agreed with the electrical engineer first.
Charts are not for navigationCharts in BoatPlay are derived from official and community chart data, are not official nautical charts, and are not for navigation. Always navigate with official nautical charts.
Register for Helm
Run the Helm on your own screen.
The Helm is the desktop and tablet version of BoatPlay. Registration gets you a licensed copy for your boat computer or
a tablet at the wheel, your boat's credentials, and first word when the phone apps reach the stores.
Tell us about you and the boatOwner, builder, dealer or just curious — the form takes a minute.
We reply personallyWithin two business days, with the Helm package for your platform and a walkthrough of demo mode.
Your boat gets its credentialsPer-boat, per-device, revocable from the fleet dashboard. Read-scoped by default; a leaked credential can never write telemetry.
You are registered.
Thank you — we have your details and will reply personally within two business days with the Helm package for your platform. A confirmation is on its way to your inbox.
In the meantime, the live demo above is the real helm running a simulated day.
For boat manufacturers
License BoatPlay for the boats you build.
White-label helm and app, telemetry to your service desk, and one system in every hull instead of six vendors that never talk to each other. Electric, hybrid or petrol; NMEA 2000 and CAN.
