This is my first post here team, so be gentle. I have built quad and tricopters before and had success with the APM and Mission Planner family. I also like to sail and race foiling, single-handed sailboats (UFO and Moth). Most of these boats use an awkward ‘wand’ dragging in the water to detect elevation and actuate a push rod that controls flap angle on a front hydrofoil. The whole system is very mechanical, prone to breakage and the wand literally drags in the water making the boat slow.
I am endeavoring to create a marinized system that would act as a flight controller for my UFO foiler. My thought is to use a sonar sensor to detect elevation above the water and have the APM actuate a servo controlling the front foil flap angle to maintain the elevation.
A couple of questions:
Can APM work independently of an RC controller? In this case, I want the board to boot up and immediately start trying to get me 36 inches off the water. I don’t want to have to use an RC controller control it.
Is there a Mission Planner setting that I can use to accomplish this or will custom software be required?
Does it make sense to control / send instructions to the APM using a RasPi or some other computer acting in place of an RC controller?
We would prefer that people not sit on stuff under ArduPilot control. In this case I think ArduPilot is also overkill, for this you will probably have more work to get it working that to write something from scratch on a Arduino. I think for ArduPilot you would need some code changes in anycase to get it to boot right up to flying at a pre-set altitude.
However, if you fancy making the boat autonomous you have totally come to the right place.
I remember reading about a similar project on some blog somewhere, although I cant seem to find the page. I did find this on Sailing Anarchy. I know such a system is outside the rules on a moth so I would be surprised if it was legal on a UFO, not that that is a reason you shouldn’t try it.
From a Arduino point of view you would probably just need the sonar and a servo output to start. I would low-pass filter the sonar reading and use a PID controller to get up to the set altitude. Then you can look at adding more features with an IMU to account for roll and pitch.
@patmo141 Is using ArduPilot as a datalogger for his boat. That might also be of interest, but as I say we would really prefer ArduPilot is not in control of stuff with people on.
I love this idea (on a model)! I feel like the fixed wing flight controller should work for this because it’s basically elevators, cannards, and altitude hold. My recommendation is to give it manual fan/motor and rudder control, and hook up some servos to main foil (cannard) and rudder foil (elevator) , and then play with mix and gain until it flies. Keep us posted.