Free Automatic Boat Tracking

Introduction

I’d like to share an exciting new feature of our Smart Boat system: online boat tracking. We’ll be using No Foreign Land (NFL) to display these tracks, and it’s completely free—no subscription fees, nothing. NFL is an online platform for sailors and boaters to share information about their anchorages and track their boats in real time. It features a dynamic map where users can log their boat’s position, share their routes, and provide updates on anchorages. NFL also offers much more, including location-based information and community interactions.

I’ve written an integration that makes this all happen. You’ll need to have the Smart Anchor integration installed, and here’s a video guide on how to do that. The Smart Anchor integration will also include online boat tracking with an optional link to NFL. If activated, the system will routinely send position reports to NFL. This allows you to see your boat’s track on NFL, making it incredibly useful for family and friends to follow your journey. If you lose internet connection while sailing, the integration will save your positions and send them to NFL once the connection is restored.

To demonstrate the setup and show you the integration in action, I’ll walk you through the configuration process step by step. So let’s get started.

Configuring Integration

Here we are on the settings page. If this is all new to you and you don’t have your boat set up as a smart boat, here’s a video guide on how to start this journey. For the rest of us, we go to Devices and Services. As I mentioned in the introduction, you need to have the Smart Anchor integration installed. I have it installed here, so we click on that and then go to Configure. You can also set this NFL tracking up during the initial installation.

The very last field, which is optional, is the NFL Tracking API Key. We need to get this from the No Foreign Land account that we have set up. It’s only available in browser mode; you can’t get it from the app. So, go to No Foreign Land, log in, and navigate to Settings. Scroll down to Boat Settings, and there you’ll find Boat Tracking. Scroll down until you see API Key, and then copy it to your clipboard.

Go back to the Smart Anchor integration, paste the API Key in, and click Submit. That’s basically all there is to it. You just have to set it up once and leave it, and from now on, it will continually send your position to No Foreign Land, regardless of whether you’re anchored or not.

Family & Friends

For friends and family, they can either use the browser or the smartphone app for No Foreign Land. On the browser, you can give them the URL. For example, the URL I have here includes my boat name, Topaz. It normally comes with a number, but there’s an option to create a custom URL. They can then follow your journey. If they’ve signed up for an account, they can actually follow your boat.

Deactivate Tracking

If you later want to deactivate tracking, simply go back to the Smart Anchor integration, delete the NFL API Key, press Submit, and it will stop tracking.

That’s it for setting up online boat tracking with No Foreign Land.