Running hours are the meter readings behind hours-based maintenance. When a component's hours pass the threshold a schedule sets, Nauticare creates the maintenance task for it.
Three ways a component treats hours
Set on the component itself, under the Hours switch:
- Own hours — the component keeps its own counter. Only these components appear on the Component Hours page, because they are the only ones with a reading to write.
- Linked to component — it reads another component's counter instead. Useful when several components share one meter: raising the source component's reading also drives the schedules of everything linked to it. The component it links to must be one that owns its hours.
- Hours switched off entirely — the component tracks no hours, and hours-based schedules cannot be created for it.
The hours type cannot be changed while other components are linked to this one; the form says Cannot edit hours type because other components link hours from them, so re-point them first.
The first time a component is set to Own hours the form asks for a starting reading. If the component had owned its hours before, that box is pre-filled with the reading it left behind — leaving and returning to Own hours keeps both the counter and its history rather than resetting them.
The Component Hours page
Maintenance → Component Hours lists every active (non-archived) component that owns its hours, with columns for Order, Equipment, Component, Tags, Last updated and Current hrs, plus a Columns control (Show or hide columns, with Component always shown) and the same Filter panel as the rest of the maintenance area.
Order is a number you control that sets the position of a component on this page — handy for putting the engines at the top. Change the number and save it with the disk button beside it.
Rows whose reading has not been touched in over a week (168 hours) are highlighted, so a page of stale meters is obvious at a glance.
Entering a reading
With maintenance edit permission, each row has an Edit hours cell: a number field and a Save button. The Save button only becomes active once you have changed the value.
Nauticare asks you to confirm before saving when the new figure looks suspicious — either lower than the current reading, or more than 50 hours above it. A Confirm Hours Change dialog spells out the old and new value and asks you to Confirm and Save. That catch exists because a typo in a meter reading silently drags every hours-based schedule on that component with it.
Readings must be whole, non-negative numbers. There is no upper limit, and a reading is allowed to go down — a replaced sensor genuinely starts again. Saving a reading is recorded as a change in its own right; it is not the same action as editing the component, and once a component owns its hours the component form shows the current figure read-only, pointing you here instead. Re-saving the value already on record changes nothing and is not written to the history.
The moment a reading is saved, every hours-based schedule on that component — and on any active component linked to it — is re-checked, and any that have come due get their task created straight away.
Automatically fed readings and Connector Data
Component hours can also arrive automatically from a telemetry connector. Connectors and their data-point mapping are configured in Vessel Settings → Connectors (on a yacht running the on-board app, this setup is done aboard and the cloud shows it read-only).
Where a telemetry provider feeds a component's hours, the reading shows with an Auto chip and the cell shows sync status — when it last synced, and which provider it came from — instead of an editor. Those rows are never treated as stale.
You can still override one by hand: the pencil beside the sync status, labelled Set hours manually, opens the manual editor for that row for this visit only. Reloading the page returns it to the provider's reading, and the next poll from the provider will overwrite a manual value.
When Marine Insight is connected for the yacht, Maintenance → Connector Data appears in the sidebar. It shows the connection summary (Source, Vessel ID, Latest reading, Last checked), a Trend chart for inspecting recorded signals over time, and an Open Marine Insight dashboard button for full live telemetry.
Hours history
A component's detail page carries an Hours history section listing every change to its counter, newest first, with columns for When, Hours (the previous and new value), the Source of the change, and By — who made it. Automatic readings are attributed to System rather than a person. This history is kept separate from the component's own edit timeline so that a year of telemetry cannot bury the handful of real edits to the component record.
On a yacht running the on-board app, readings are entered aboard: the cloud keeps the columns above but offers no editor, showing a Sync status column where a provider feeds the row. See Who Can See and Change Maintenance.