Notus has released a long life battery and intelligent charger for it’s Trawlmaster and Seinemaster net monitoring systems. Sensors will now be powered by a high end NiMH battery cell. Recharging these batteries, is an intelligent fast charger.

The Notus Trawlmaster, is a complete trawl monitoring system for twin and single rigs. On a twin rig, the spread on each net, trawl wire measurement and middle wire adjustment are provided. Other parameters monitored include headline height, wing end spread, temperature, etc. The system can also be used on single and triple rigs. The Seinemaster monitors the depth, sink rate, temperature and distance to the seine.

Battery life has doubled with the new NiMH cells. This has significant advantages for vessels fishing longer trips as one charge can typically last one trip. Additionally, Notus has always allowed skippers to control how often information was received by simply clicking a button on the 3D PC software. The longer battery life allows a skipper to receive more information in a shorter period of time.

The intelligent charger has a number of advantages over the previous model: charging is faster, there is a automatic cutoff and the charger can analyze the batteries to indicate a problem. A typical sensor can now be fully charged within 2-3 hours. An LED lighting configuration indicates the state of the charging process and when the cell is fully charged. Finally, the intelligent charger analyzes the batteries and indicates if there is something wrong with the cell. This charger will charge up to 4 sensors at one time.

Although just now being released, the batteries and charger have gone through extensive testing. One of the vessels that tested the charger is the Ocean Quest (shown to the right). The skipper was very pleased with the performance of the new batteries and charger. Current sensors can be easily upgraded to the new batteries and Notus currently has 60 vessels converting to the new design.