What a week!
Rain, Rain, Rain and sometimes... Rain.
Not a good week for a launch.
Today was the first day to get a glimpse of the sun behind the clouds. So i used the chance for a video session and in depth testing of the new Catamarane hull (with the fins).
I tried various speeds, various payloads and various tracks to see if the new platform is stable.
It was!
1. A new speed-record with 10km/h (running with 8A and a 500g Li Battery-Pack)
2. The big battery-pack with about 1.5kg weight was also OK and had only a slight impact on the speed (about 1km/h slower). With that pack, the endurance of the ship will be around three hours with one charge.
(running with about 5A and a speed of about 6-7 km/h).
3. The straight-line stability on long runs was also OK, but still has some optimization potential.
After that runs, i had enough courage to mount my beloved Sony DigiCam (a DCR P100) with some gaffer-tape on the ship. I made two runs, the first with the cam attached to the front and the second with the cam attached to the aft. The aft-footage gives a nice look, how the ardupilot is controlling the yaw-servo.
All went well.
Despite the fact that the ship had a near-accident with one of the diving teachers of our club, who managed to surface at exactly the moment, i launched the ship.
Maybe we can make a bet, how much lawsuits for "malicious injury" i will have collected until the end of the year.
I have put the footage of some runs here:
Comments
no, i used the plain data from the sonar.
But Dr. Depth has various options for compensating. There is also a compensation for tides.
looks interesting, also cool videos
Seems that the Catamarane design-decision was not so wrong.
My plans actually go into the opposite direction:
more lightweight and more efficiency.
http://www.aeosciences.com/pictures#Next
Sort of a bigger version of what you're building.
I am working on that already...
I though that you would have to use a rudder in the watter to steer the ship. The air boats I have played with (RC piloted) didn't like to hold a strait course but that cat dose it well, and quick. Nice work. Tempting me to scrap my sail and put a propeller on my set up. Nice work. Looking forward to depth maps.
Troy
good idea.
Indeed, in the early days (with the Jet-Ski Boat) i tied a nylon-line behind. It worked good for some 100m and it stabilized the ship. Incredible, there was not much drag on the line, despite the diameter (it was no fishing line). But now, the ship is old enough, to do the job without a helping line, or rescue swimmer :-)
The mapping of this lake can now be done in less than two hours. (not counting the hundreds of hours for testing and optimization).
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