I use Coastal Explorer (CE) on Win7 and Win10 laptops, and would like to know how to interface the alarm on CE to an external alarm - e.g., trigger a relay that can in turn trigger a bell, horn, piezo buzzer, etc. It strikes me that this is mostly a hardware question - I do not know enough about computers to understand how CE’s low beeping of the laptop speaker when, say, the GPS data dies, could be used to trigger an external relay.
Any suggestions or ideas on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.
My intention is to use a small 12vDC fire bell as the alarm - completely unlike any other noise on the boat.
Unfortunately, we haven’t run across any laptops that have an option for connecting a 12 volt DC alarm or buzzer. The only option I can think of to provide a more noticeable alarm would be to plug an external speaker into your laptop’s 3.5mm headphone jack (if equipped). However, there wouldn’t be any way to change the tone of the ‘beep’ that Coastal Explorer generates.
Hello Rob,
I see this is an old topic but thought I would comment. I’m also interested in an external alarm that would wake the dead. My hearing lose from 20 years of fire truck sirens in Brooklyn makes it hard to hear alarms in the cockpit especially if it’s really windy. Coastal Explorer alarms are great, but not loud enough for me. I did a quick search and came up with the following device that may lead to resolving our alarm volume problem:
Now, I’m not a software engineer by any means so not sure what’s involved with getting CE to trigger this USB device, but it seems like an interesting possibility. Ideally, I would connect both a loud audio alarm along with an LED light in the cockpit.
Rich Cassano