Tiller autopilot for small sailboats

Posted Apr 19th 2008 9:42PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks

[Dennis] sent in the glider that [Art] built, but I had to feature his dinghy autopilot. It runs on solar power, takes GPS data via serial and maintains the heading using a servo motor to drive the line. It's an excellent solution for the hardware hacking boater.

Reader Comments

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1. As one who enjoys sailing, I have to say that this is one project that rocks. High five.

Posted at 1:24AM on Apr 20th 2008 by RT (Panzer Time!)

2. Don't want to be a grinch, but I did this about a year ago and submitted it to the site. Why did it never appear?

Posted at 3:28AM on Apr 20th 2008 by M K B

3. Nice project!

Seriously. That is clever and useful.

Keep up the nautical hacks folks, It's interesting stuff!

Posted at 8:59AM on Apr 20th 2008 by strider_mt2k

4. Search for "navcom" on youtube and you can see mine :) the URL with the source code is in the url thingie above. My system is microcontroller based and has been put on two boats and a plane.

if you can't see the url: http://67.15.245.21/portfolio/navcom_ai/

Posted at 2:07PM on Apr 20th 2008 by m k b

5. The glider is pretty cool. Wonder if anyone has tried to write a thermaling algorithm? Birds with brains the size of a walnut do it with great success; how hard could it be? ;)

Posted at 3:55PM on Apr 21st 2008 by Orv

6. I reccomend that everyone check out his autonomous glider, some seriously awesome stuff there

Posted at 7:50PM on Apr 22nd 2008 by userjjb

7. Why not do a typical autohelm? you can get the sensors to sense rotational drift for dirt most anywhere and that would be more sensitive to the really slow update that GPS has.

Now autopilot that does Waypoint x,y,Z and will traverse the three enroute to waypoint Z that's cool.

Posted at 5:38PM on Apr 24th 2008 by fartface

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