Page 43: of Marine Technology Magazine (May 2013)

Whereas the proliferation of social media has generally not had dramatic impact on the b2b community, particularly in the technical realm, an interesting new service from Ohmex Ltd. was a hot topic in the hallways in Southampton: Using Twitter to deliver near real time navigation, tide and weather informa- tion direct from sensors.The original suggestion for a Twitter based service came from a Navigation Pilot working at a small port on the N.E. coast of England using tide and weather instruments made by Ohmex Ltd. On occasions the Pilot had to escort a vessel when the harbor ofÞ ce was closed and nobody could relay the tide and weather information to the vessel on its approach to harbor. The IT solution proposed was for a web based service with the Pilot using a mobile phone application to view the data, this suggestion did not allow for the poor mobile signal reception offshore. The proposed Twitter solution proved the best as it was available for both web based users and also SMS text message services over GSM, the 140 character message being easily understood and including basic information such as instrument location and data age.The measurements are based around the Ohmex PortM8 in- strument, parameters include tide height, water temperature, wind speed/direction, air temperature and barometric pres-sure. Calculated and derived parameters include signiÞ cant Navigation, Tide and Weather Information via Twitter Credit: Ohmex Instruments www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 43MTR #4 (34-48).indd 43MTR #4 (34-48).indd 435/6/2013 1:24:08 PM5/6/2013 1:24:08 PM