Boat arrived

Today I got the boat I ordered last week. As stated previously, it is an “Atlantic Yacht” by Heng Long. The boat was returned to the retailer, so he sold it as defective on eBay. Since it was returned I expected something broken, but hoped it wouldn’t be serious. Well, it exceeded my expectations. At least regarding the “broken parts”, its performance leaves to be desired.

First a full view of the boat.

Continue reading Boat arrived

Possible future project: Automated roving tank

I know, people are going to scream “Skynet” about this one, but I just can’t resist. I have am RC tank (coincidentally also from Heng Long) sitting around here, doing nothing. Until today I thought it was dead, but today I realized it works after changing the channel. When controller and receiver are on channel A it doesn’t work, after changing both to channel B it works fine. No idea why.

Anyway, after realizing it works fine I decided that this might be a nice project after I get my Boat working. There is one problem though I need to address on both projects: Having more than one motor for propulsion. Every code I’ve seen yet on ArduPilot assumes that you only have one motor for propulsion. Normally that’s no big deal, I just wire both motors together and connect them to the ArduPilot as one.

That doesn’t work on the tank though, since tracked vehicles need to control both tracks independently for steering. On the boat this will be useful to program closer turns, having one screw turning forward and the other one turning backward.

New Project: RC boat autopilot

Today I took the first step for a new project that kept returning to my mind for the last couple of days.

I bought a remote controlled boat on eBay. The boat is an Atlantic Yacht by Heng Long which is sold by the retailer as “defective” because it has been returned by a customer. No idea what’s wrong with it, I hope it’s just the control unit I’m going to replace anyway.

Currently I’m planning to equip it with an Arduino based ArduPilot that is modified for marine usage.