LandYacht
Open-source van automation

Built for people
who spent their
life savings on
a van they
now live in.

↳ The grey tank is full, by the way.

A monitoring system that answers the questions that actually matter when a parking lot is your neighbourhood — no subscription, no cloud, no yacht prices.

01 — What it is

Real data.
No cloud.
No drama.

LandYacht is a modular automation system for converted vehicles — vans, Sprinters, skoolies, buses. Built around a chip-sized brain and a network of cheap wireless sensor nodes, it answers the questions that actually matter when a parking lot is your neighborhood: how much battery do you have, is the water running out, and is this thing level enough that your coffee stays in the cup.

It runs entirely on hardware that costs less than a campsite with a shower. It requires neither a monthly subscription nor the spiritual surrender of connecting another thing to someone else's cloud. It does not care what kind of battery, solar charger, or life philosophy you arrived with.

For the growing army of van and bus dwellers who are nerdy enough to want real data but too broke and too stubborn to pay yacht prices for it.

<$150
Full system, parts only
8
Independent nodes
0
Cloud dependencies
$0
Monthly fees, ever
02 — Coverage

Every
thing
that
matters.

Independent nodes cover every corner of the van. Each publishes to its own MQTT topic and is reachable over WiFi for firmware updates. Swap one out — the rest don't notice. The first three are running in a real bus today; the rest land one node at a time.

Battery SOC — cell level ✓ TODAY
Fuel level ✓ TODAY
Vehicle leveling — with calibration ✓ TODAY
Fresh water tank IN DEVELOPMENT
Grey water tank IN DEVELOPMENT
Temperature + humidity — inside, outside, battery bay IN DEVELOPMENT
Door servo control PLANNED
Zone lighting PLANNED

Every sensor node runs on the same board — one spare part covers the whole system.

03 — Dashboards

Three
surfaces.
One truth.

The same sensor data appears wherever you need it. Each display runs independently — if one goes down, the rest keep running.

Physical
The cab display

A $10 touchscreen mounted in the dash. Always on. Tanks, temperatures, battery, leveling — with a plain-English bubble level and one-tap calibration. Works with no internet and no phone.

Mobile
The phone dashboard

Served straight from the brain over the van's own WiFi. Installable as a home screen app — no app store. Remote access from anywhere comes with the optional Pro tier.

Historical
On-board history

Battery, tanks, and temperatures logged on the brain itself. 24-hour, week, and 30-day graphs right on the dashboard. Understanding the van as a system over time.

These aren't mockups — they're real screens from the cab display, pulled straight from the repo. Which is public now, so you can check.

Main overview
LandYacht cab display — main overview with tanks, battery, and system status
Temperature history
LandYacht cab display — 24-hour temperature history graph
Leveling calibration
LandYacht cab display — level calibration dialog
04 — Under the hood

Proven
open source.
On a chip.

At the center of LandYacht is one small board — the brain. No Pi, no cloud, no subscription: the whole nervous system runs on an $8 chip that sips half a watt. It doesn't join your network; it is the network.

The brain
An ESP32-S3 microcontroller that hosts everything below. Boots in seconds, no operating system to corrupt, no SD card to wear out.
The network
The brain broadcasts the LandYacht WiFi access point. Every sensor node, the cab display, and your phone join it. No router, no campground WiFi required.
MQTT broker
The central nervous system, running right on the brain. Every node publishes here, every dashboard subscribes.
First-time setup
Runs from your phone. Join the LandYacht network and the setup page appears by itself — tell it what's in your van, and you're done. No app, no account.
History logging
The brain logs every key reading on-board. 24-hour, week, and 30-day graphs, drawn right on the dashboard — no database to babysit.

Pro tier — optional

Want remote access from anywhere, or years of archives instead of a month? A Raspberry Pi can join as a passenger — Tailscale VPN, big storage, cameras someday. The core never depends on it.

The system is complete without it.

~$150
Full system · parts only · no subscription
Victron Cerbo GX
$475–$900
Industry standard. Excellent hardware. Proprietary ecosystem, display sold separately.
Simarine Pico
$350–$600
Beautiful hardware. Closed protocol — no MQTT, no actuation, no external data output.
05 — Principles

The
decisions
that don't
move.

These are load-bearing. They define what LandYacht is and what it will never become.

One board per sensor

Any node can fail, be replaced, or be skipped without touching anything else. Consolidation feels efficient until it breaks.

MQTT is the contract

Change the hardware, keep the topic. Change the dashboard, keep the topic. The topic structure is the only interface that matters.

Standalone first

Every node is useful on its own. The fuel gauge works without the Pi. The cab display works without the web dashboard.

Plain English in the UI

"VEHICLE LEVEL" not "pitch/roll". "SEALED" not "servo state: 0". The driver is not a developer.

No proprietary lock-in

Every component can be sourced independently. Every service can be replaced. The system outlives any single supplier.

Open source, protected brand

The code is free forever under GPL v3. The name LandYacht is trademarked. Both things are true and compatible.

LandYacht

Built by someone who
genuinely needed it.

The code is on GitHub. The documentation is plain language. The hardware list is a $20 order. Start with one node, add the rest when you're ready.