So, I'm a marine engineer who works on a ship. Our job is to move boxes (containers?) between platforms and shore. In order to get permission to enter a platforms safety zone, the ship has to be in dynamic position (DP) mode, where the captain maneuvers the ship by giving coordinates to the DP panel.

The DP system holds the ship still, even when the weather is rough, it just applies more thrust to the propellers in order to hold the position. The brilliant thing about DP systems is the Kalman filter, which gains experience with time, and learns to "read" the motion of the ship, wind speed and acts accordingly.

Building a fully fledged DP rc boat would probably be way too complex for me, but I'm thinking a "Hold position" knob, and a rc boat with one rear propeller and a side thruster.

I need a wind sensor, a GPS, a thruster, Kalman filter (oh boy...), a compass, just to get started. But the thing is, I have no idea on how to stitch these things together. I need some help with the big picture, so I can get started and work on my own, and then again ask stupid questions.

The gyro will be giving me data on a certain direction I am heading, the GPS will feed me more data, and so will the wind sensor. I need to receive all of this, make use of it, and send it down to my propellers. What do I use to interpret GPS data? Raspberry Pi? Arduino? You have any suggestions on a GPS setup for a project like this? I am not hell bent on getting things down to millimeter accuracy yet, just within a ballpark.

 

This will be difficult. Even if nothing is trying to move the boat, the jitter on the GPS will be greater than the size of the boat unless this is a very large RC boat.

 

RPI is overkill on this, Arduino would suffice. Ebay has cheap SPI, UART, I2C GPS modules.

PSOC might be a possible choice, ARM Core, analog capability, PWM for speed control.

This would handle all the GPS interface, computation, motor speed control....



This is GPS code example -

https://www.element14.com/community...project089-gps-example?displayFullThread=true


Regards, Dana.

 

@AlbertHall Precision is of no concern right now. If I can get the boat to react upon the inputs from the sensors, I consider it a success, as I know GPS precision is difficult on a 60 cm boat. If it can maintain a position within a 2x2 m2 area, I'd be happy with that, or whatever the GPS jitty allows.

@danadak From the looks of it, Arduino has what I need to control the things you mentioned, and PWM. Is there something I am missing, as to why I should look into a PSOC?

 

Great project.

Wind sensor must be both direction and speed.

 

@Kjeldgaard Yes, I forgot to mention that.

 

as to why I should look into a PSOC?

1) PWM with HW dead band control
2) Onboard programmable LUTs for phase generation (BLDC)
3) OnbOARD 1% vREF
4) 12 BIT SAR
5) Onboard DACs
6) Onboard OpAmps, as well as Comparators
7) DMA engine in PSOC 4M and 5LP
8) Digital Filter block in PSOC 5LP
9) LCD character and graphic support
10) Drag and drop random logic support
11) Routable, internal and pins

..........

See attached component list, PSOC 4 is subset, 5LP family virtually
all. A component is an on-board resource.

Regards, Dana.

 

@danadak I'm not sure I know what half of that stuff means, but I'm already sold. I will look into it.

 

www.cypress.com, videos, "PSOC Creator 101" series good place to start.

http://www.cypress.com/products/psoc-creator-integrated-design-environment-ide


2 boards, first $ 4 PSOC 4 low end, second $ 10 PSOC 5LP high end.

http://www.cypress.com/documentation/development-kitsboards/psoc-4-cy8ckit-049-4xxx-prototyping-kits

http://www.cypress.com/documentatio...oc-5lp-prototyping-kit-onboard-programmer-and

Regards, Dana.

 

Some RC quad copters (drones) can hold position in 3D space quite accurately, literally within inches. You might check into what kind of control system they use.

 

@danadak Very good series, I will most likely buy one PSoC. Thanks for your help.

@gramps Yes, true. But I intent on making so much of this on my own as possible.