We are designing a two-motor boat with M200 motors from BlueRobotics and their Basic ESCs. Initially, the RC mapping was quite bizarre with our ‘throttle’ being controlled through the steering stick of our TX12 and vice versa. I was able to switch the mapping so that throttle is now on the left side and steering is on the right. However, the one thing I am unsure of is the motor direction. With forward thrust, our motors/props turn out, so left motor going CCW and right motor going CW and vice versa for reverse. However, steering seems to make our motors go in the same direction. Is this the correct configuration of our motors/esc? Should steering make the motors go in the same direction, if not what could be a fix? Thanks!
Hi, welcome to the forum and welcome to Ardupilot.
I have made a pontoon boat with 2x T200’s and 2x basic ESC’s - they are excellent.
I assume you have connected your TX to the ardupilot flight controller.
I have configured the same directions of spin. To change the spin direction on the motors you have a number of options.
swap any two of the wires on the ESC to the motor
or set the reverse switch in mission planner
When the motors are set correctly, they should work in ACRO mode for forwards/back left/right
Configure Ardupilot - using ARDUROVER 4.5.1 is the recommended - earlier works.
Configure (from memory) frame_class as boat (2), and skid steer as per the wiki Motor and Servo Configuration — Rover documentation
And confirming - unless you tune the boat in ACRO (or similar mode) your RX misconfiguration and Servo/ESC misconfiguration can cancel out - but give you crazy automatic mode behaviour.
Thank you for the detailed reply, it seems like testing in ACRO is the way to go. We will test in ACRO and report back with any significant findings. The Taihiki testing looks great btw!
