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Archive for the ‘boat’ Category

As part of their city’s beach restoration project, Instructables users Kousheek Chalraborty and Satya Schiavvina, who go by the team name Technovation, needed to construct a small and cheap boat that could assist in mapping the depth of the sea floor at various locations. The design they were able to come up with achieved this goal and even went beyond it by incorporating an autonomous navigation system into their watercraft. 

The hull of the boat was made from a leftover Tupperware container and discarded water bottles, therefore reducing the cost significantly and integrating recycled materials. After the pontoons were attached to the bottom, a pair of brushless DC motors were screwed into place at the top, along with an 11.1v LiPo battery and dual 30-amp ESC modules.

At the core of the robot is a single Arduino Uno that has a custom shield mounted to its top pin headers. This board consists of an nRF24L01 transceiver module for sending/receiving telemetry, a GPS module for tracking position, and a compass module that determines the boat’s orientation. With the firmware loaded onto the Uno, Kousheek and Satya created their own dashboard in Python that allows them to view information in real-time as well as send commands from across the water.

You can read more about this project here on Instructables.

The post Small-scale autonomous boat made out of recycled water bottles and a Tupperware container appeared first on Arduino Blog.

What do you get when you combine an old optical drive, some empty soda bottles, and a microcontroller? Well…nothing, really. That’s still just a pile of rubbish. But if you add in a battery, an RC receiver, and some motors, you’re getting dangerously close to a fun little toy to kick around the pond as [Antonio Rizzo] recently demonstrated.

A couple of plastic bottles lashed together make up the hull of the boat, and [Antonio] has used the internal frame of an old optical drive bent at a 90 degree angle to hold the two small DC motors. In a particularly nice touch, the drive’s rubber anti-vibration bushings are reused as motor mounts, though he does admit it was just dumb luck that the motors were a perfect fit.

For the electronics, [Antonio] has paired a custom motor controller up with the uChip, a diminutive Arduino-compatible microcontroller in a narrow DIP-16 package. Wireless communication is provided by an off-the-shelf cPPM receiver such as you might see used in a small plane or quadcopter.

The whole build is powered by a common 18650 lithium-ion battery, which could also be easy enough to recover from the trash given how common they are in laptop batteries; though if you threw a new cell into this build we wouldn’t hold it against you. Everything is put into a high-tech plastic sandwich bag to provide minimum of waterproofing with the minimum of effort.

If using a commercial RC receiver and transmitter is a bit too mainstream for your tastes, you could always roll your own radio.

Clamped or bolted to the stern of the boat, outboard motors offer a very easy and (relatively) economical way of powering small craft. The vast majority of these outboards are gasoline powered, with electric models generally limited to so-called “trolling motors” which are often used to move slowly and quietly during fishing. That might be fine for most people, but not [Olly Epsom].

An engineer focusing on renewable energy by profession, [Olly] wanted to equip his small inflatable dinghy with a suitably powerful “green” propulsion system. Deciding nothing on the market quite met his requirements, especially for what manufacturers were charging, he decided to convert an old gas outboard to electric. Not only did he manage to do it for less money than a turn-key system would have cost, but he ended up with a system specifically geared to his exact requirements. Something he says will come in handy if he ever gets around to converting the dinghy to remote control so he can use it as a wildlife photography platform.

Put simply, an outboard motor consists of a gasoline engine with a vertical shaft that’s coupled to a right-angle gearbox with a propeller on the end. Beyond that they’re a fairly “dumb” piece of gear, so replacing the engine on top with something else should be (at least in theory) a pretty simple job. Especially on the small older model that [Olly] decided to use as a donor unit. The 1974 Johnson 2 HP motor didn’t have any tricky electronics in it to contend with; the thing didn’t even have a clutch.

Once [Olly] had removed the old gas engine from the top of the outboard, he designed an adapter plate in OnShape and had it cut out of aluminum so he could mount a beefy 1 kW 48 V brushless electric motor in its place. Connecting the new electric motor to the carcass of the outboard actually ended up being simpler than putting the original motor on, as this time around he didn’t need to reconnect the cooling pumps which would usually pull water from down by the propeller and recirculate it through the engine.

While the mechanical aspects of this project are certainly cool, we’re especially interested in the control system for this newly electric outboard. It uses a 3.2 inch Nextion color touch screen and Arduino Nano to provide a very slick looking digital “dashboard” which can convey motor status and other information at a glance. Unfortunately, [Olly] says the details on that part of the project will be saved for a future post, leaving us with only a single picture of the system’s interface for us to drool over until then.

We’ve seen the occasional seafaring project that made use of an electric trolling motor, and we’ve even seen an electric drill put in some overtime spinning a prop in the water. Converting gasoline boat over to electric is however a rarity. But much like electric car conversions, such projects may become more common as the cost and complexity of powerful electric propulsion systems continues to fall.

[Thanks to Alex for the tip.]

[Markus Gritsch] and his son had a fun Sunday putting together a little toy airboat from a kit. They fired it up and it occurred to [Markus] that it was pretty lame. It went forward and sometimes sideward when a stray current influenced its trajectory, but it had no will of its own.

The boat was extracted from water before it could wander off and find itself lost forever. [Markus] did a mental inventory of his hacker bench and decided this was a quickly rectified design shortcoming. He applied a cheap knock-off arduino, equally cheap nRF24L01+ chip of dubious parentage, and their equivalent hobby servo to the problem.

Some quick coding later, assisted by prior work from other RC enthusiasts, the little boat was significantly upgraded. Now the boat could be brought back to shore using any R/C controller that supported the, “Bayang,” protocol. He wouldn’t have to face the future in which he’d have to explain to his son that the boat, like treacherous helium balloons, was just gone. Video after the break.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, toy hacks
Gen
10

Bluetooth Enabled Fuel Consumption Monitor

arduino, arduino hacks, bluetooth, boat, Electronics, flow, fuel, Microstream, monitor, OF05ZAT Commenti disabilitati su Bluetooth Enabled Fuel Consumption Monitor 

[Malebuffy] bought himself a used boat last year. Fuel isn’t exactly cheap where he lives, so he wanted a way to monitor his fuel consumption. He originally looked into purchasing a Flowscan off the shelf, but they were just too expensive. In the interest of saving money, [Malebuffy] decided to build his own version of the product instead.

To begin, [Malebuffy] knew he would need a way to display the fuel data once it was collected. His boat’s console didn’t have much room though, and cutting holes into his recently purchased boat didn’t sound like the best idea. He decided he could just use his smart phone to display the data instead. With that in mind, [Malebuffy] decided to use Bluetooth to transmit the data from the fuel sensors to his smart phone.

The system uses an older Arduino for the brain. The Arduino gets the fuel consumption readings from a Microstream OF05ZAT fuel flow sensor. The Arduino processes the data and then transmits it to a smart phone via a Bluetooth module. The whole circuit is powered from the boat battery using a DC adapter. The electronics are protected inside of a waterproof case.

[Malebuffy’s] custom Android apps are available for download from his website. He’s also made the Arduino code available in case any one wants to copy his design.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Ago
27

Transatlantic Drone Takes to the Sea

arduino, boat, Dan Flanigan, drone, Dylan Rodriguez, Robotics, science, transatlantic, unmanned Commenti disabilitati su Transatlantic Drone Takes to the Sea 

The Scout Transatlantic project has broken the world record for the furthest distance traveled by an autonomous unmanned boat, and it is just getting started.

Read more on MAKE

Lug
30

Nice Project twin jet. still progressing. a test run video to come in spring

boat, jet ski, project, twin jet Commenti disabilitati su Nice Project twin jet. still progressing. a test run video to come in spring 


Lug
28

Buttercup New Screen day 2 Lexan sheets fitted

boat, fiberglass, lexan, polycarbonate, wheel house Commenti disabilitati su Buttercup New Screen day 2 Lexan sheets fitted 


Day one's Efforts

Day 2 Lexan sheets fitted 


Rake looks right in profile we think



Goldilox Farline Vixen built 1975 photo 1994 Bridlington harbour. Our last effort constructing a wheel house



Looks like a lot more space still need to construct the goal post for the rear


I have a cunning plan for the front corner pillars, involving fiber glass tape grease proof paper fiber filler and bits of wood and Coroplast


Should make her much more usable









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