While in the HCDE program at University of Washington, I took a Physical Computing course which introduced me to Arduino.
My current project is to incorporate an Arduino into my 30 inch radio controlled sailboat that I built a few years ago. My end goal is to integrate the Arduino to automate basic sailing controls like sail trim and rudder control.
To start, I want to collect information from the boat and transmit it to shore.
- Wind Direction in relation to boat
- Gathered with a wind vane connected to a rotary encoder.
- Will show the apparent wind in relation to the boat. Apparent wind will change based on boat speed, this is fine because the sails are trimmed to the apparent wind.
- Boat Heel and Pitch
- A three axis accelerometer will detect boat heel as well as pitch.
The system consists of two Arduinos, one on shore and another on the boat.
- The on-boat microprocessor gathers data from the sensors, does some data formatting, and then sends the data wirelessly to the on-shore Arduino.
- The on-shore microprocessor receives the data and displays it on an LCD screen.
In the future, I may include additional data
- Sail Position
- Wind Speed
- Boat Speed
- Location of (or proximity to) other boats
- Location of course markers