@gmorph wrote:
Hi everyone. There is a new release of APM:Rover which is also for Boats. Details here:
Note one of the exciting things for boat users is the new EKF2 which should greatly improve arming of the boat whilst its on the water. Give it a try and let us know how you go!Thanks, Grant.
Posts: 6
Participants: 2
@Lat_Long wrote:
Hi everyone,
Firstly I know this is not directly a topic for this forum but I seem top get a much faster response here that in the hardware forum, so sorry in advance:I am using RFD868+ (baud rate 57600, air speed 64, 50 channel hop, duty cycle 100, ECC checked, Mavlink checked, two antennas on each end, do not have RTS/CTS checked, running SIK 1.12 on both), AMP 2.6 with Missions Planner. When I hit connect the it takes over 30min for the "Getting Prams" to complete.
In the past I have been using 3DR radios and the "Getting Prams" took less than a min.
I am bench testing so I have the power setting at 10 with 15metres and two concrete walls between. I have tried higher and lower settings but it's the same.
Any one know why it is taking so long to Down load the prams? Fairly Frustrating!
Thanks in advance,
RS
Posts: 19
Participants: 6
@EddieWeeks wrote:
Good News, I just got word that our proposal “Unmanned Automated Ocean Survey Platform”
Will most likely be funded in full. Like most my other boats, it uses APM/Pixhawk and mission planner.
This craft will utilize 4 x 300 watt solar panels and golf cart batteries for possible 24
hour operation.The boat itself is a Prindle 18-2 with lots of flotation and room in the hulls for batteries… (334 lbs)
My other boats ran about 100 watts/knot at 3 knots… this one should be far better…Before I get the funding I starting developing a long range monitoring system using uno and 24bit a/d board.
This system will transmit via vhf radio at 1200 baud, position, volts and amps of everything every 10 seconds
The range of this system will be 10 miles to start but can be increased easily.
I will keep the community updated because you guys have great ideas quite oftenEddie Weeks
www.droneworksla.com
Posts: 3
Participants: 2
@barnhatt wrote:
Been lurking in the background for a while now but I think I'm about ready to start work on my first build. What I'm envisioning is a dual trolling motor setup (skid steer) set on a 16 ft old town look 160T kayak. Once the autonomy is worked out I eventually want to incorporate a hummingbird or lowrance side scan unit on a teather to collect high resolution bathymetry and side scan data here in the Puget sound (Washington state) . I will be using the 16ft tandem So that I can "ride along" until I'm comfortable with the autopilot taking complete control at which point I will move the whole package to a smaller hull (single seat kayak more than likely). As I'm just getting started I would love to hear any suggestions or look at any relevant prior posts.
Posts: 2
Participants: 2
@Edouard_R wrote:
Hi everyone,
I'm building a boat in order to make 3D bathymetric rendering. I'm using :
- Pixhawk
- Mission Planner
- Firmware : ArduRover v3.0.0
- Transmitter : Spektrum DX6i
- Receiver : Spektrum AR7700
- Motor+ESC : 2*T100 Thrusters with ESC from BlueRobotics (http://docs.bluerobotics.com/thrusters/)
I encounter a difficulty when I want to arm my Pixhawk after all calibration. I can't arm with my transmitter. The left stick control Throttle and Yaw, and the right stick control Pitch and Roll. So I try to hold the right stick (steering stick I supposed) on the right but nothing happen.
When I press the arming button on my ground station, my pixhawk is armed (fix blue light) but it still appear DISARMED on GCS.Someone can please help me ?
I try to fix this problem since 3 days. When I load ArduPlane firmware V3.6.0 on my Pixhawk I can arm without any problem (left stick hold in the bottom right-hand corner, throtlle and yaw at minimum).
I suppose it's a firmware problem or configuration problem ?Thank you in advance for your help,
Regards,
Edouard R.
Posts: 5
Participants: 3
@Kevin_K wrote:
This Discussion Thread is a continuation of the original Discussion Thread, "Rugged ArduBoat for Mapping Applications", that was originally located in the DIY Drones ArduBoat User Group.
Forgive the mess that is the control box, I'm working on trying to find a place for everything, but some of these power wires...
I got everything working with the exception of one of the thrusters and I can't figure out why. Here's a rundown of what my issue is:
1. As per the Rover instructions, I have the left (port) thruster plugged into Servo1 and the right (starboard) thruster plugged into servo 3.
2. I have skid steer OUT enabled.
3. When I increase throttle only the right thruster rotates.
4. When I reverse the PWM wires going to the Pixhawk, only the left thruster rotates.
5. This leads me to believe I have an issue with RC1 PWM output. Is there a parameter I missed in my setup?
Posts: 1
Participants: 1
@jpkh wrote:
What type of boat frames our users would like to see. What type of categories people are usually using.
Thread to create ArduBoat preferred reference frames.
Monohull,
Catamaran,
Racer,
What else?
Posts: 2
Participants: 1
@gvr63 wrote:
Hello sonar boat designers
My new sonar air boat project is nearly finished. The boat is build from an old bait boat. The brains are a pixhawk controller. The motor and prop (12 x 4.5) are rather large but that seems to be a good thing. In the old design there was an 10 x 4.8 slow fly prop and a smaller motor with a power consumption of 3 A for a speed of 3 km/u. With the new prop we have 1.6 A with the same speed
Power source are two parallel 3s 1p 5000 mAh lipo's. The sonar is a Lowrance Hook4 and is perfect for this job. The boat is designed for mapping an acid lake. That's why there is no prop in the water and nearly no metal parts. All metal parts are well insulated with plasti dip. More on the project later once it did it's job and survived (end of July)
Best regards
Guy
Posts: 4
Participants: 2
@Lengua79 wrote:
Hello everyone,
A friend and I are trying to automate a 16' catamaran with two thrusters, implementing ArduRover 3.0 Beta version . We're using SKID_STEERING_OUT = 1, and were able to tune the control parameters achieving an acceptable performance, and then run a number of successful waypoint autonomous missions in AUTO mode. We've also performed successful autonomous waypoint missions controlling the vehicle with an Odroid-XU4 single board companion computer and the Dronekit-Python libraries. However, we had an interesting problem in the last mission (which had 6 waypoints): whenever the vehicle reached waypoint 3, the vehicle completely stopped, and the orange straight line, which depicts the heading to the next waypoint in Mission Planner, went random. The only way the mission was able to succeed was by relocating waypoints 3 and 4 in a way that smooths out the trajectory.
Something we've notice was that even though the vehicle was set to a CRUISE_SPEED of 1 m/s, most of the time the vehicle was traveling at a speed around 1.9 m/s, which was not good for transitioning from waypoint 3 to 4, since they were a little bit close from each other, and were located in a way that would trace a sharp turn (but not impossible at all. The vehicle should be able to handle this, specially after allowing turn on the spot with the PIVOT_TURN_ANGLE set to 30 deg).
I have also noticed this behavior sometimes, when running simulations with the Dronkit-SITL program, in similar conditions (that is, high speed / sharp turns).
Could anyone please shed some light on this issue? Why this happens? Is it an Ardupilot bug? Is it some sort of failsafe?
Thanks.
Posts: 1
Participants: 1
@treefpv wrote:
Just want to share my first attempt to build DIY Boat from PVC.
Been a while reading the ArduBoat forum, and interested to build my own DIY Boat, the purpose for this build is for learning how it works, so performance is not the priority for now. This is the plan:
And the materials used:
It's easy and available in the hardware store.
I have Autopilot hardware, Pixhawk and APM Clone version, for this build I will use the APM Clone version.
I use food container for waterproof box for electronic kit, motors are from OpenROV kit, will use this motors for thruster in this build, and ESC from my RC Plane, HobbyKing 20A Blue ESC
Radio TX and RX using Taranis X9D Plus, and FrSky V8FR-II.
Now, time to fit it all together
I don't have enough cable for connecting motors to ESC for now, waiting for cable from the store.
Will update for the next progress, any comment and suggestion are welcome.
Thank you.
Posts: 1
Participants: 1
@art62 wrote:
Hello everyone,
I recently built a arduboat kayak for lake mapping but I have an issue. When I set Auto mode with waypoints the kayak just spins in circles , moves , and spins in circles again. It goes nowhere near the waypoints. In Manual I have full skid steering perfectly fine. What could it be?
Some specs:
Pixhawk with ArduRover v3.0.1
2x T200
Afro ESC(Blue Robotics ESC)
DX6i (receiver connect with 8channel PPM Encoder)
Posts: 12
Participants: 4
@VOERBOOTUPGRADE wrote:
Hello guy's
i am all newbie on ardupilot but since a have the latest version apm 2.8 with 4 in 1 powerboard and radio telemetry.
i was wondering if i can use a depth sounder that can provide me with depth mapping in reefmasterthe depth sounder is a stand alone unit sonar and transmitter with gps and compas on my boat
a ground station that shows me the contour of bottom and wich is connectable with a laptop running reef master onmy goal is too use mission planner and having all the read outs of my depthsounder in mission planner
photo is showing the image i prefer this unit is transmitting on 2,4Ghzanother issue is it possible too use the compas and gps antenna from this unit to connect it with apm if the voltage is 5V and i know what wire is used for vcc gnd rx tx and the compas
i know lots of questions maybe you guy's have some idea's for me
small issue whit current internal compas i'm having trouble too read only the external compas
jumper is removed but internal compas is still working and faster then externalhope too find som answer's here my compas is 6H GPS
sorry if there are some topics above wich are handeld somewhere else on this forum please just provide the link
kind regards
Johan
Posts: 11
Participants: 3
@Joe_Haase wrote:
I just wanted to share a project I have been working on with a bunch of kids from the 4-H. It started as a busted piece of Styrofoam we found doing a water way clean up, and has evolved into this. The original design was not stable, so we made a newer, larger one out of 1" Styrofoam sheets glued together. Power comes from a pair of 16000mAh 4S Lipo's, 2 water cooled 90A ESC's, 2 980kva motors spinning 6x4 props, and a APM 2.5 that we are still working the compass bugs out on. The motors are mounted to a shaved down block of aluminum and bolted directly to waterproof servos to provide steering.
The boat is 36" long, weighs 17lbs loaded, and draws just over a inch and a half of water. It's currently fitted with a cheap used fish finder to do depth recordings, but will be upgraded to side scan sonar.
Posts: 1
Participants: 1
@Wally wrote:
When adding peripherals or troubleshooting a good schematic is needed. I have not been able to locate any board schematics on the web. There is mention of Eagle files, not that they are simplest way to get things, but I can't even find Eagle files for the 2.6.
Posts: 1
Participants: 1
@mbardsley wrote:
My son is a manufactor of Subsea video recording equipment and lights for divers. We wanted to branch out. and the project was given to me to solve. I have a basic design of a 5" plexiglass tube for the watertight pressure vessel. I have a 500mm width on that, attached to the midpoint top/bottom will be a 500mm x 500mm acrylic plates, ending in the back with a 90mm width acrylic backplate. There will be 4 ducted thrusters, 60mm each, run by LGL out-runner motors, positioned fixed near each corner. This will be very similar to a quad-copter, except I need to provide forward/reverse thrust. This will provide for a very stable platform that will kind of fly thought the water. Main propulsion is provide by a 70mm Jet pump motor with a thrust vectoring outlet. This pump can run backwards, but at less efficiency for full 360 motion. The Jet pump is planned to provide a much faster vehicle to take on more rapid currents.
Problem, electronics. I need the following
1) heads-up display on screen or goggles with camera view in real time. Including depth, heading, speed.
2) flight control using a dual joystick RC style setup( I fly RC Heli's, quads, Planes)
3) Inertial navigation based on last known GPS
4) Everything must be able to be controller via Ethernet to the ROV. Cameras are all IP, and lighting control is using Adriono mega256 setup. Only 1 cable is tethered, Cat6 Extended range Gigabyte with a Gig switch with POE on the ROV, and entire ROV powered via Power over Ethernet. There will be onboard Lithium cells with a delta charging system fed by the POE Power system is fed from the Batteries, and charged with access wattage from the POE that can extend the run time when using lower power settings.Anyone think of a good setup for the flight control?? Hardware/firmware ?
Posts: 2
Participants: 2
@martinandriener wrote:
I thank the ArduBoat group and all the greater ardupilot community for your exemplary intelligence-sharing and cooperative spirit!
Working with Pixhawk autopilots running APMrover2 aboard small Autonomous Surface Vehicles, my question is about the possibility of providing alternative heading data, for example from a dual-antenna phase-ambiguity-resolution GPS system, instead of using only on-board and external magnetometers.
I've made, and am continuing to make, an earnest effort to grasp the body of code that comprises APMrover2 and its many libraries and references, but so far it has been so formidable that I've taken the alternative tack of trying to simulate an external magnetometer (using an Arduino as a sort of UART NMEA translator and I2C imposter). By brute force I have learned a lot about I2C in general and about the HMC5883L magnetometer IC in particular, but have bogged down at the point of trying to figure out what the ardupilot code expects to get back from the external compass (in this case device "30") after addressing register 10 (ID register A, the first of three).
I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on alternative heading input ...or on my almost ridiculous exercise of trying to fool the Pixhawk and ardupilot by synthesis of phony X and Y magnetic vectors that always sum to the set declination, given ancillary heading input.
Posts: 1
Participants: 1
@mojtaba.b wrote:
Hello friends.
I have a huge problem. Please help me
I made a boat and use of ARDUPILOT 2.8 to navigate it. I load Ardurover v2.5(3da78052) firmware to my board. I connected radio control to APM input (1-AIL**3-THRO**8-Mode SW) and output of APM connect to brushlessmotor and servomotor as rudder(1- Rudder**3- Motor).I use of Ublox GPS Module V2.0. I calibrated it and all thing in mission planner software is good.
in Manual Mode i no have any problem but i have two big problem in AUTO Mode.
problem1: when I switch from Manual Mode to AUTO Mode my boat Began to move with maximum speed that It is dangerous.
problem2: in AUTO Mode my boat Not follow waypoints and move Only on a direct path. I delete first waypoints in memory and write other waypoints but it Went the same way again and Does not regard to waypoints.
Given that I am a beginner, Please explain to me in simple What should I do??
Thanks
Posts: 2
Participants: 2
@neon64 wrote:
Sorry a real noob here...
Our team is working on a boat, however we are following along with the ArduRover docs because that seems the closest. Here the docs show loading firmware onto the APM using Mission Planner: http://ardupilot.org/rover/docs/common-loading-firmware-onto-pixhawk.html.
I have 2 questions:
The firmware is code that runs on an Arduino, right? A quick search shows that https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/tree/master/APMrover2 contains some code. Is this what runs on the microcontroller?
For a boat, how does the firmware/hardware differ to that of a rover? A boat has different outputs to a rover (ie: propeller and rudder vs wheels) and thus the microcontroller would have to control servos and motor speed. How much code do we need to write ourselves (I have done Arduino programming before, but not with ArduPilot etc)
Posts: 4
Participants: 2
@John_Easton wrote:
I will be deleting and replacing this first post with all the little things I have learned from the gurus on this board, particularly David Boulanger and Michael Oborne, that have actually solved issues that I could not solve without their input.
The focus is going to be on what happens after a 'firmware update' or a 'restore default parameter', because this is where my wheels usually fall off and it takes me a week to get back on track.
I hope to also get my sonar survey boat running straight again and will post the outcome of that here too.
Posts: 2
Participants: 2
@D_S_S wrote:
My project uses a trolling motor with a 30amp ESC. Prior to using the Pixhawk, my ESC would power the RC receiver. Now when connecting the ESC to one of the Pixhawk main output signal pins, it powers up the Pixhawk.
I'm concerned as this bypasses/negates the power module and I don't know if the power from the ESC is regulated.
The wire running from the ESC is the standard pos/neg/signal (yellow/red/brown). Should I just blank out the positive and negative coming from the ESC to prevent it from powering up the Pixhawk?
Also, can I use the ADC 6.6v from the Pixhawk to power my RC receiver? Has this been done?
Posts: 9
Participants: 5
Power source are two parallel 3s 1p 5000 mAh lipo's. The sonar is a Lowrance Hook4 and is perfect for this job. The boat is designed for mapping an acid lake. That's why there is no prop in the water and nearly no metal parts. All metal parts are well insulated with plasti dip. More on the project later once it did it's job and survived (end of July) 
