Differential Steering w/Torqeedo Motors

We are developing a rugged boat for river mapping. We have two electric torqeedo cruise motors for propulsion.

From the documentation (Torqeedo Electric Motors — Rover documentation), it seems that only one torqueedo motor is compatible. Any comments?

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Hello Ryan!
I want to do the same thing on a catamaran frame. Did you finally manage to achieve differential steering with two Torqeedos or should I use other motors?

@rmackay9 was dual support added?

Thanks @geofrancis for bringing this to my attention. I had somehow missed this.

Currently only one Torqeedo motor is supported but I’m very happy to add support for a 2nd. It’s not particularly hard so I’ll bump it up on my to-do list. I can’t immediately promise when it’ll be done but I’ll try to get it done in the next month or so.

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Hello @rmackay9 and thanks for replying!
In my understanding, in order to connect a second Torqeedo I’ll need to have a spare serial port. So shall I be able to connect Telemetry, GPS, a Companion Computer and 2 Torqeedo motors in Pixhawk 4, which as I see has Telem1&2 + one spare serial port, so one less port? Is there another port I can use?

@Chrant,

Yes, two serial ports will be needed (one for each Torqeedo motor). The autopilot’s USB port could be used to connect it to the companion computer I think. Another idea would be to move the GPS/Compass to CAN to free up a serial port. I don’t know if holybro sells a CAN GPS (they probably do) but in any case, any ArduPilot compatible CAN GPS should work.

We already design a pcb board based on ESP32 that controls 2 torqeedo motors. It receive SBUS data from Ardupilot (on Pixhawk 4) using channels 3 and 4 (Channel 5 act as ARM channel for that board). We are looking a solution to manage 2 different telemetry data (one from each motor)
Torqeedo Interface Board, has 2 TTL to RS485 converters, SBUS input, SBUS output, Neopixel leds to indicate status, I2C port to control an external GPIO interface. And a OLED I2C Screen to display data from motors and sbus data
We even design a torqeedo motor simulator software, just to be able to develop without having motors beside.
Must of torqeedo class software was based on the excelent work of @rmackay9

Our boat is a catamaran of 3.5 meters in length and 2.1 meters in beam and it turned out to be very manoeuvrable with the differential control of the two torqeedo motors.


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Greetings Randy (@rmackay9) …any updates regarding support and use of 2 Torqeedo motors with a pixhawk? We have a potential project in the works that could use the power of these motors. Thanks for all you do!

@FIT-RS,

Re supporting two Torqeedos, I think about it often but sadly it hasn’t reached the top of my to-do list yet. I’m pretty sure it’ll only take a day or so to get it working though so if you or someone needs it for a particular date just tell me and I’ll try and re-prioritise things.

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Thanks Randy! We do not need it at the moment, but are investigating using 2 Torqueedos for a large USV for Mining remediation on hazardous pit lakes and tailings ponds. We have been using dual 1.5 HP trolling motors on a 2.5 m pontoon boat for bathymetry, but will need a large boat for a sub-bottom profiler and a remotely deployed Niskin ring to collect water samples at various locations in the pit. We were planning on using a single Torqueedo with a rudder or steering, but I do like the simplicity of a skid-steer USV. I’ll keep in touch, thanks again for all your help and support.

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I too have a project that would benefit from dual Torqueedos, so count this as another vote!

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Thanks Randy your support ti config. N.2 torqueedo Is welcome. Thanks to all work
Alfonso

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Hey @rmackay9, may i ask that the ardupilot has supported two torqeedo for differential steering? Thanks for your great work!

Hi @Howard,

No, I haven’t added dual Torqeedo support to AP yet. sorry!

Hello @rmackay9

Thanks for your reply. Would it be added to support recently? We have a research project to use 2 torqeedo motors. Thanks for your great work.

Howard

Thanks for the continued support
I would like to ask if the feature of two Torquedo engines has been added. We have a project and we would like to use Torquedo engines. Do you have any suggestions for us for any alternative solutions?
thanx

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Hi @Mahamoud_Mansour,

I’m getting closer to this. I need to get Rover autotune working first but after that I hope to add dual Torqeedo support and support for the higher powere torqeedo motors too.

Hi Mahamoud did you already solved your requirement?

By the way xianglunkai is working on a PR now so we are making real progress.

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Hello ! Actually no we still searching for that , if you Can please i saw your project and its so interested please can you share your email . Thanks