From our friends at the Coastal Observing Research and Development Center at UC San Diego, an APM-based ocean-going kayak! (it uses a variation of the ArduRover code)
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From our friends at the Coastal Observing Research and Development Center at UC San Diego, an APM-based ocean-going kayak! (it uses a variation of the ArduRover code)
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
Good use of prefab-ed hulls :)
Like ours (somewhat cheaper, aka in the spirit of Makers):
@Rustom,
Nice thruster and project. I recently looked of the Univ. of Florida's (my alma mater) PropaGator entry in the Roboboat competition. They designed their own hubless pod drive. Interesting, but perhaps too complex. I really like your design, especially as a deep water drive. So when can I buy a pair?!
Hi Tom,
Your pontoon catamaran approach seems like a great solution and using the Fiberglass floats is a great idea.
Are you planning on using rudders or just differential propulsion for steering control?
The fiberglass version of those floats is harder to find than the Balsa kits.
I had already also found commercial deep water thrusters were prohibitively (to put it mildly) expensive as well, but I am very happy to see the ones Rusty is working on potentially being available soon, they look like an excellent solution.
Best,
Gary
Ceramic bearings would be a good solution wouldn't they?
Now, I read your press release;-)
I like this part of release; "A plastic framework integrated with a brushless electric motor enables the thruster to operate continuously for months at a time, navigate into deep waters and resist the corrosive nature of ocean saltwater."
Jiro: The thruster can go very deep. There's no enclosed air or oil filled cavities so there's nothing to compress besides the material itself. We haven't tested the extremes so we don't know for sure yet.
Monkeynutz: We've been using the AfroESC from HobbyKing. It's an open-firmware ESC that can be reprogrammed for forward/backward rotation. The thruster will work with any ESC rated above 12 Amps.
@Rustom It looks really nice thruster:-)
I have one question on this thruster for the allowance of depth in the water.
Hey Gary,
We replaced the bearings with high-performance plastic bushings. The material we used is designed specifically for underwater applications and it works great. The stator and rotor are coated with a protective epoxy coating that is impregnated into the winding under vacuum so there are no trapped air bubbles.
We won the "Proto Labs Cool Idea! Award" a few months ago (http://www.protolabs.com/cool-idea/previous-awards#9878) so we've got injection molded parts now. The image you posted is 3d printed. It looks like this now:
It's got about 5 pounds of thrust and it's pretty compact with a 3" prop diameter.
Stay tuned! They'll be available pretty soon.
-Rusty
Hi Rusty,
That pretty much looks like exactly what I am looking for.
I know there are a few pro units and customs built into submersibles that work like this but they are totally out of my price league.
Out of curiosity I would like to know what you are doing for the exposed bearings if that isn't a secret, but you can probably sign me up for a pair of these.
Great Job.
Best Regards,
Gary
Gary,
We've been working on a thruster for applications exactly like this. In fact, we've been building a few APM powered vehicles for the water. (http://hackaday.io/project/1677-SolarSurfer)
If you're interested, check them out at bluerobotics.com. We're launching a Kickstarter campaign pretty soon. The thrusters will be much cheaper than anything on the market right now (except using a brushless motor directly), and they are built for the ocean.
-Rusty
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