ArduBoat Project to Clean Water Pollution (Project ORRCA)

ArduRover ArduBoat
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Hello members of the Ardu Boat community! I am Aditya, I’m not really new to the Ardupilot scene, however I’m new to this whole forum thing. I’ve built a few Arducopters (single blade as well as multicopter) before but my “expertise” is in the arduboat world and ASV systems. I’m sharing an ardboat project I’ve been working on for a long time now, this is the fourth iteration of the project.

Without further to do, here’s the good stuff you want to hear. My project is called Project ORRCA it’s an ASV developed in response to the BP oil spill to clean water pollution. It can clean oil, sediments, nitrates, phosphates, and other non-polar chemical pollutants from the water bodies.

Here is a link to some photos: NAUTALIA V4 PHOTOS

And a design video: Nautalia V4 Design

And the Official Project Website: Project ORRCA

In general, the Nautalia (its name) is a 2 meter class Autonomus Surface Vessel powered by ardupilot (a modified APM 2.8). It can be controlled via ground station or via a transmitter which I am holding in the pictures (more images later). It also has a 5.8ghz FPV connected to a go-pro that live streams to the ground station. I am trying to make this a “product” so making it as user friendly as possible, you don’t need to remove the batteries to charge the craft, simply plug an extension cable into the AC port and a balance charge inside is programmed to automatically charge the 3 LiPo batteries that power the craft.

The propulsion system is an outboard-style drive that has a turning vector of 170 degrees which allows the craft to almost do a 360. The pivoting motor mount is turned by a waterproof HS-805BB servo and the actual propulsion system consists of a Blue Robotics T200 with a Blue Robotics Basic ESC.

The craft was built with a wooden core, and a Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP) fuselage, rubber watertight and silicone seals between the panels, zinc plated stainless steel, and aluminium. The entire thing took a few weeks for me to put together by hand but I’m looking into manufacturing techniques.

If you’d like me to elaborate on the filter I can :slight_smile:

Would appreciate any feedback! Again, I’m looking into a Kickstarter and making this a product so any feedback would help!

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Orrca,

Looking good! Feel free to do a blog post on ardupilot.org (same as a post but set the category as “Blog”).

I think it would be best to upgrade from the now very old APM2.8 to a Pixhawk or one of the other supported flight controllers. We have so many better options these days and with a more up-to-date controller you can take advantage of all the improvements that have gone in recently. For example, the controls for this vehicle will be better using vectored thrust.

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Thank you for your feedback! I will definitely create a blog post.

I have been looking to upgrade the controller I’ve been looking into “the cube” ? I don’t really have the money right now to buy a cube but hopefully soon. Do you have any specific FC recommendation? I’ve only really used APM.

Thank you for sharing the vectored thrust! This is what i’ve been looking to add for a while!

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A nearly complete list of supported flight controllers is here. The Pixhawk family of flight controllers (including the cube) should all work with ArduPilot and is the easiest to work with.

In general buying from ArduPilot partner’s stores is appreciated because they provide financial support to ArduPilot which we need because of course, we’re a non-profit.