Hi all, this is a bit of a update on the GSoC project.
I have done a fair bit of work on restructuring of code so far. The first task was to move the Sailboat functionality to its own class within the code. This means there is now a SAIL_ENABLE parameter, you have to enable sailboat before the rest of the parameters will show up. This gives us a bit more freedom to add parameters without giving the normal rover users loads of stuff they don’t need. The second change was to split up the wind vane library. This split gives a generic back-end template that will make adding more sensor types much easier in the future. There should (hopefully) be no functionality changes from these code improvements.
The new wind vane library allowed me to implement a driver for NMEA wind vanes. I have tested it with Calypso wired ultrasonic unit although any NMEA 0183 units using the MWV message should also work. I have just finished mounting it to my testing boat. This will he a huge improvement over the potentiometer wind vane I was using previously.
I have also spent some time adding support for ‘motor sailing’. That is a sailboat with both a motor and sail. The code will decide whether or not it should use the motor based on a wind speed threshold. I have also added a three possision switch RC_OPTION. This allows the user to select 1. never use motor, 2. motor enabled (ie the code decides) 3. force motor. This give the ability to do a standard rover loiter for example. To test this I plan to fit a air propeller to the back of the boat with a BL_Heli ESC that supports reversing. Not the most elegant of solutions but much easier than retro fitting a water propeller.
The code tidy ups have already made it into master so can be tested here. If anyone fancy’s testing NMEA wind vanes and/or the motor sailing functionality I can build custom firmware. Hope fully that will also make it into master over the next week or two. I should give the standard disclaimer about using none-stable release code, might do funny stuff and behave in unexpected ways ect…
The next job is wing sails, like this, does anyone have one? I don’t have and hardware to test with, and havent been able to find anywhere you can buy them. (I would quite like to build one but its not Google Summer of Building Hardware unfortunately, but we will see how we go)
