Comment by Craig Burden on June 27, 2012 at 11:54am

That will be amazing! I hope it all works out

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on June 27, 2012 at 12:46pm

Neat, but I would have used a much different model.  I'm not sure why he chose that one.  The ideal would I think be the 52" Arun class lifeboat model.  It should be self-righting and water-tight.  Something I would think you would want?

If placement of solar panels was a problem with that hull, I would think something like one of the large freighter hulls would be better.  The one he chose seems to be a pretty inefficient hull.

Comment by Andrew Beckett on June 27, 2012 at 2:19pm

I want a 130W solar panel that can fit on the hull pictured above.

Comment by MarcS on June 27, 2012 at 2:20pm

He is talking about proof of concept, meaning standard model boat with autopilot without Solar...

Should be no problem for ArduRover?

When it really comes to the harsh enivironment of open ocean the world looks different. To my knowledge no autonomous boat made it across an ocean... Salt water, wind, currents, dirt...

There is a competition, anyway: http://www.microtransat.org/

Comment by Jack Crossfire on June 27, 2012 at 2:22pm

Doesn't everything we have originally cross the ocean on boats from China?

Comment by Andrew Radford on June 27, 2012 at 2:30pm

Sounds really cool - would be awesome if there was some kind of satellite uplink to track progress.

I suspect with the small model however, it would probably be better to build them cheap and let loose a bunch of them. I can imagine them getting tangled up in old nets and floating islands of Japanese Tsunami bits.

Admin Comment by Thomas J Coyle III on June 27, 2012 at 4:00pm

I would say that a waterproof semi-submersible hull with very efficient electric propulsion and a deck supporting a large bank of waterproof solar cells would be the way to go. In Jackspeak it would be "a slow boat to China". LOL

Just a thought.

Regards,

TCIII

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on June 27, 2012 at 4:02pm

TC, yeah, that would be a good idea too.  The boat must be very robust to make the journey.  I don't even know if it's possible.  Any storm and it will just get totally swamped, multiple times.

Comment by James Printer on June 27, 2012 at 4:19pm

What does it matter if it gets swamped, if it floats back after the storm has ended?

Comment by Craig Burden on June 28, 2012 at 1:04am

I would put a GSM modem on it for an uplink, then you can know where it is, if you did it correctly you could have a full read out of its status. I would 100% have a way for it to either flip it's self over or make it able to run upside down too! There is absolutely no chance it will stay upright after having multiple tons of water dumper on it. Also, it can't mt partially submersible, make it a floating submarine, it WILL be fully submerged multiple times I guarantee it! And one more, Thanks to a recent "study" of the Raspberry Pi we now know it can get quite warm. 

http://michaeldornisch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/diy-raspberry-pi-heat...

Definitely have a passive cooling system, like have heat sinks on the CPU that extend out of the vessel into the water. The worlds largest water cooling system :)

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