Automated boats/ships - part 1

So...I've had a radio controlled boat / ship, well, it's 4ft long, so it's still a boat, but it's mighty large, since covid-19 lockdown time - I bought the boat around April/May2021-ish (I think).... my plan was when the lockdown lifted to visit the Warminster boating lake and use the radio controlled boat on a Sunday morning for a bit of fun and for something different.

The boat I bought was a replica of one I starting building way back in the mid-1980s, the boat knocked around for a while, I fitted the prop-shaft and rudder and fitted a period correct water cooled fuel engine - the one's that were used in RC planes.  I never got the engine working properly.  Anyway, I did keep the boat with me until the end of the 1990s when I sold it to my sisters husband (at the time) who was more skilled at this sort of things.  He rebuilt the engine and got it working/running.  However, he didn't do anything in relation to the radio control gear.  He did paint the boat however and did a really nice job of making it blue and white.  Circumstances changed and I was able to purchase the boat back again in the early 2000s.  I purchased the radio control equipment, servo's and battery etc... I had everything measured out and ready to fit, however, circumstance changed for myself and I made the choice to stick the boat up for sale on eBay - it went very quickly and the new owner was impressed at what they had bought.

Here's a couple of photo's from 2001 (apparently, images used in the 'for sale' advert):

The 'new to me' boat was a replica of the original boat - but everything had been put into place, this time with a large electric motor, radio kit and an extra set of wiring for external lights fitted to the boat - that is a great visual touch.  I did dig up my garden during lockdown to accommodate a 'canal' between two ponds in my garden; however due to 'complications' and too many visits from herons I filled everything back in.  My plan was to have 'autonomous boats' driving up and down the garden - but it never came to fruition.  The big boat stayed as an ornament in my living room.

I did purchase a few other smaller boats to go along with the 'swarm' boats idea and I purchased radio control gear, motors, ESC devices and batteries... however, history repeated itself and they sat on the top of a cupboard in my home office.

I had plans of using Raspberry Pi's to help with the autonomous boats - the software side of things being pretty simple and the prolific quantity and types of sensors available meant it shouldn't be a difficult task.

I made the choice at the start of 2023 to actually "do stuff" this year, I've been working too much the past 25years for customers and the company I work for - I'd like to think I've done well, however, it has come at a cost, I've not been doing the things I want to do.  Well, I'm not getting any younger and if I don't do them now, I won't get to do them... So I'm forcing myself to build the autonomous boats this year.

As I've been playing with Raspberry Pi Pico devices, my plan is to continue with that board if I can...and for the first version I will use an existing flight-controller, namely the PixHawk 2.4.8 device along with the matching GPS device - a few other devices will come into play.

I then had the thought that why don't I work out a way to use the Pixhawk to control the ESC that controls the electric motor, as that will do it smoother, also connect up a servo to the rudder and then hook the Pico up to control the Pixhawk from code.

I shall set this up in isolation and prove it can all work before involving any boats.

Here's an initial setup on the arm of my sofa! it beeps and bops just like R2D2!

Once this has been proven and I get a bit more understanding on the pro's/con's of this approach, I may look into using the Pico and PWM (pulse width modulation) code to bypass the Pixhawk - the Pixhawk is a little bit pricey at £120-ish a go.  It does give a LOT more functionality / scope, but for the smaller boats I might not need the Pixhawk capability.

One of the perks of the Pixhawk is the ability to hook it up to the ArduPilot Mission Planner - this allows the ability to set waypoints visually and allows for telemetry to control the boat to go on missions.  I might do this with the big boat and opt. for simpler setup for the smaller boats.

I did attempt to setup mission planner on Ubuntu Linux - it worked-ish... So will be running it from a win 10 laptop in the future. It did work well enough for me to see that the pixhawk and GPS was working okay though as you can see in this video:

However, if I fiddle around for a bit, it goes from playing nice to in essence a GPF:

One of the things I would like to do however is setup an open-source MarineAI style framework that can be used from small scale up to large scale boats & ships.

Don't think there is a need for it?

Well check out this article: The Mayflower

mas400.com

and this BBC article: Crewless container ships

Now, that raises an eyebrow, it's the same thing, just scaled up.... 

Will update with a Part 2 when I get some hardware working...and maybe some software....