Dave, I have had no time to work on mine. I dont even have my boat in the water yet. Hopefully this weekend. I did order a different motor...
This was one of my clutch ideas but instead of the spring, the pipes would lock together. I don't like the idea of the spring because you will be...
Fanie, how do you have a clutch with that? Why did you make a linear encoder over buying one? They can be expensive but if you look hard...
zorbas. I looked for a long time and could not find one. I had a few ideas on how to make my own clutch to use with a linear actuator but I...
Frasco, I would go with an H-Bridge. Some have overcurrent and overtemp protection so the chance of blowing them is slim. The relay is a cheap...
I think you guys are misunderstanding what I am saying. TTL is NOT RS232. Even if RS232 is +/-5v, TTL is 0-5v. Dave, you will need some sort of...
Tim, I was referring to a PLC. RS232 is defined as the logical states being -3 to -25 and +3 to +25. You do not need a MAX232 either. It...
I have never seen that. So these are serial ports that cannot be used for programming or communicating with other RS232 devices? Strange.
Joakim, that is the compass I am using. The little bit I used it it seems to work great. I am polling it pretty fast but I noticed if I poll it...
My compass. The enclosure could be alot smaller but it was something I had laying around. The enclosure and the connector are waterproof....
I have a commercial Octopus drive that is a cable steering box. It has a motor and clutch in it to engage/disengage the motor. I got a good deal...
Dave, I am offering constructive criticism. Like Frasco said, we are not in competition. There are features your system will have over mine but...
Frasco, I was thinking about doing the same thing. The user could build a system with parts from Sparkfun. I am not interested in selling the...
Dave, good to hear you have it all working. I dont think I would have to get that complex with my steering algorithm for a power boat. I will...
Dave, did you modify the control algorithm at all or did you just tune your PID? or both?
My rudder is fairly linear. I didn't have a chance to fully tune my PID loop. It didn't oscillate which leads me to believe that I may just be...
Dave, glad to hear you're making progress. I am done with mine for this year. The boat is almost ready to be pulled out. I had mine working but...
I have a rotary cable drive steering system on my boat (powerboat). While the easiest thing to do would have been to get a linear actuator, it...
It can be done without a compass, but it is not ideal. As tspeer stated, it would oscillate between the cross track error. There is little...
An update. I tried the autopilot with using GPS only and the way I orginally intended was not going to work. That was pretty apparent within 5...
