Autonomous Boat 50km Waypoint Mission

this video is sponsored by Factor around a year ago I converted my GPS guided catamaran Tugboat into a longrange autonomous platform by adding a 5G cellular data link with a live feed camera in this video I'm going to attempt my longest autonomous boat Mission yet the goal is to circumnavigate Banbridge Island which will be a 56 km or 35 M Journey aside from the distance this Mission will be extra challenging because it's the first time I've ever tried something like this in ocean water that means extra corrosion from Salt and more seaweed to get tangled in the props I did build these protector plates that will hopefully help redirect the seaweed away from the propellers but they've never really been put to the test so who knows if they will work the previous time I drove this boat a little bit of water had leaked through the shafts because of that I decided to install some little buge pumps that are controlled by relays that are controlled by arduinos that are controlled by a liquid level sensor so when it detects that the water level gets high enough the pumps turn on and drains the hole pretty [Music] slick woo I wasn't sure how much cell service there would be on the other side of the island so I installed called an rfd900x that would allow me to connect directly to the autopilot over 900 MHz just in case the l-site Halo didn't have cell service in certain locations let's pause right there this video has some ADHD we're going to be bouncing around a little bit before continuing on with the autonomous boat we need to focus our attention on the support vessel which is my Boston Whaler in my previous video of this boat I went on 125m camping trip powered by nothing but the Sun that trip was a great way to get a feel for what longrange solar boating is like and one of the things I learned is that if I do anything like this again in the future I'm going to want a more efficient boat hole this boat is designed for stability at planning speeds not efficiency at displacement speeds so in this video I'm going to convert it back to what it's designed for and then I'm going to use it as a support vessel to monitor my autonomous drone boat as it attempts its longest Waypoint Mission yet through treacherous ocean waters so if you're only here for the autonomous drone booat stuff then you can skip ahead to that part but for now let's continue with the Boston Whaler Saga so after my Lake Roosevelt trip I knew I wanted a proper engine for this boat but I was still really curious as to whether these two electric e foil Motors were capable of getting this 13t Boston Whaler hole up on plane previously I had only run these motors on a 12s battery which is around 50 volts but before switching to a gas motor I wanted to do one last test with an 18s battery which is around 75 volts to get this much voltage I'm running each motor on three 10 a hour 6L lipo packs in series upon going to Full Throttle it was clear that the boat had more power but it wasn't immediately obvious whether or not it was up on plane I think this was just because the boat was so lightweight the electric motors and little drone batteries weigh much less than any gas motor that would typically go on this boat I mean just look at how tiny these batteries are they're the only thing powering this whole boat previously with the 12s battery I was able to get 4500 Watts out of both Motors combined with the new 18s batteries the total power draw went up to 5700 watts so the question is is that enough power to get us up on plane according to the internet the definition of on plane is when the stern wash separates from the transom and here you can clearly see that happening so yes we're up on plane it was just kind of hard hard to tell at the time because this boat is so lightweight that it wasn't really going that fast despite being up on plane that was actually faster for sure if we look at our GPS speed here you can see that we got up to 4 m/s which is 7.8 knots the hole was getting up on plane at even slower speeds than that probably around 6 knots the funny thing is the speed limit in the no wake zone here is 7even knots so I could be up on plane in the no wake zone without breaking the speed limit which is pretty hilarious that goes to show just how lightweight the boat was at this point here's the V Telemetry you can see we were up to 125 phase amps and 2,800 watts per motor I was also using these new B series props for this test that were 3D printed on the formlabs form 3 plus that probably helped us get up on plane too since they're better than my old fdm printed props I find it pretty incredible that these resin 3D printed propellers can handle almost four horsepower each without braking I was very impressed so despite our success with the electric motors they're still not very practical to have on this type of hole luckily a friend was selling this 50 horsepower fourstroke to hotu outboard for pretty cheap the only catch was it didn't work this motor was previously mounted on the exact same Boston Whaler model that I have but then they crashed into a peer piling at night and broke the boat in half apparently the motor never went underwater but it still wouldn't start so Colin and I decided to try and fix it at first we thought there was something wrong with the electrical system or the ignition since the starter motor would only turn on intermittantly we opened up the throttle and replaced the neutral limit switch and the ignition and neither of those seemed to do anything we even took apart the wiring harnesses and looked for bad connections and then this happened I've spent almost a day and a half trying to figure out what's wrong with this look at this battery cable this is what happens when water gets inside the electrical cables they're completely corroded away oh my gosh wow look at that dude you should snort some of that see what happens there's barely any copper left in that thing after replacing the battery cable we were able to try starting the engine but it still wouldn't run we determined there must be something wrong with the fuel system I removed a fuel injection pump assembly and found this inside there was corrosion everywhere water had definitely gotten inside and ruined the fuel pump the OEM replacement was like $500 so I replaced it with a $40 street bike fuel pump and oh yeah it worked next it was time to mount this steering console in the boat so I had to do some carpentry this includes the cutting and into the sanding and the varnishing and the screwing I had to get new hydraulic lines for steering and fill those with fluid next it was time to mount the motor on the boat I was using a c along tied to the balcony as an engine hoist I actually ended up mounting this motor on 3D printed solid plastic wedges since the transom is curved on this boat but the motor is flat I also printed a TPU cushion to protect the gel coat and fiberglass on the top of the transom I know some people are going to think this 3D printed stuff is sketchy but the weight of the motor is actually being supported with big steel bolts HS and I had to drill new holes through the transom for those I also had to replace the trailer wheel bearings drain the engine oil drain the lower unit gear oil pump new gear oil in cut some carbon fiber plate on the stepcraft used that to mount the throttle and with that we are ready for a test drive this guy converted his snowmobile trailer into a boat pretty hilarious for the maiden voyage my dad and I took the boat through the Boward locks which allows you to go from Lake Washington out into the Puget Sound which is connected to the ocean it's the same body of water where I'll do the autonomous boat mission in the second half of this video this hole is rated for a maximum of 40 horsepower and that was 50 years ago and they apparently used to measure horsepower at the crankshaft with these newer Motors they measure it at the prop and this is a 50 horse motor so the hole is actually probably overpowered by about 15 horsepower or so of course the extra power isn't really an issue but the extra weight is a little bit of an inconvenience to make things worse I have a big 14 gon gas tank which is definitely bigger than it needs to be with all this weight in the back waves will go over the transom when I'm stopped in high seat or when the boat is decelerating to a stop and the stern wake catches up but I did put a BGE pump back there so it's not too big of an issue I think ideally I would have gone with a lighter 30 or 40 horse engine but I got a great deal on this 50 horse so I'm sticking with it one of the big benefits of having such a powerful engine is that I can pull up wakeboarders with power to spare that's pretty impressive for a 13ft boat with three people in it after going on a few Shakedown outings to make sure the engine wasn't going to fall off it was time for some boat camping with the boys we loaded up the whaler and the Zodiac with all our gear and set out for Blake Island which is a state park anel busted out the freefly Ember to get these sweet slow-mo shots I'm sure there will be plenty of people that are sad to see me converting this boat from Electric to gas but it's just so much better and more practical with the Tatu motor I think electric boat motors have their place but this specific hole just isn't it boats are terribly inefficient at high speeds so you need a power source with high energy density and gasoline is just so much more energy dense than a battery what batteries do have is power density that's why this boat was able to get up on plane powered by nothing but these relatively tiny batteries and why electric cars can accelerate so quickly but for applications requiring a lot of power for a long period of time like a speedboat gasoline is simply far superior at least for now electric boats do make sense when you're dealing with low speed displacement holes when I had solar panels on this boat I was able to cruise all day long at just over three knots and even into the night with nothing but what the solar panels provided and that was even with this planing hole that's inefficient at displacement speeds if I had used an efficient displacement hole for that solar project I could have gone much faster and further than I did with this hole I'd like to revisit solar boating again in the future but my driveway is only big enough for one boat so we're sticking with gas for now once I start on a big project like this it's all I can think about there's no room in my brain to think about going to the grocery store and that's why I love factor factor lets you avoid the chopping prepping and cleaning that comes with cooking while still getting the flavor and nutritional quality you need factor is fresh never frozen meals already in Just 2 minutes so all you have to do is heat and enjoy and then get back to doing whatever you like to do sign up for factor and you get to choose from over 35 weekly flavor packed meals that promote a healthy lifestyle this month I tried some of their Protein Plus meals like this Chipotle rubbed pork chop Factor meals come in a refrigerated box with ice packs so you never have to worry about thaing them out or freezer burn like those frozen meals from the grocery store just pop them in the microwave for 2 minutes and they're ready to enjoy okay guys today we're going to eat some green pepper and beef casserole let's put it in the microwave first impressions are that it has a great Aroma and the flavor m is divine head to factor75.com or click the link below and use code RC test fight 50 to get 50% off your first Factor box now back to the video the green beans are just succulent okay back to the autonomous boat previously I was running it on four of these ReliOn 10 a hour lithium iron phosphate batteries for this Mission I need need more capacity so I'm adding two sketchy old batteries here to the top of the boat these are the exact same batteries I used on my autonomous solar powerered field Rover back in the day one is made of some puffy 24 a hour lipo cells from a crashed drone battery and the other is made from around 11 18650 cells soldered together in order to be able to run three batteries of different chemistry together in parallel I made this little Arduino with a voltage divider and relay the iron phosphate batteries start off at around 14 volts and when they drop down to 12.8 volts the relay opens and connects the Lio and lion cells into the circuit super janky you should probably never do this but whatever it's an un demand boat and all these batteries together should hopefully give us the capacity we need to go 35 miles I've got this vessel tracking app going right now and it doesn't look like there's any boats that could be a big risk other than that cruise ship oh I didn't see that one damn yeah that could be a bit of an issue uh huh well okay so I just set my speed really low until I can make sure that it's not going to hit that cruise ship okay I think we're going real slow now 0.5 m/ second the cruise ship has passed oh there's another ship out there too W that's a container ship I didn't even see that one when I did the first 5G cellular Mission with the l-site Halo I was able to monitor the mission from a coffee shop which was pretty cool but doing this in the Puget Sound would be unwise due to all the commercial boat traffic and seaweed so for that reason I'm going to be monitoring it from my Boston Whaler but that idea got off to a rough start I made the classic mistake of forgetting to put in the drain plug before launching when I got back to the boat from parking the trailer it was half sunk It's a Good Thing This is a foam fil hole otherwise I would have swamped my brand new used motor there's another cruise ship there's so many of these things out here looks like there's a fishing boat over there I'm not sure what that light is over there on the horizon that must be a big fishing boat out there it's not the sunrise it kind of looks like it but it's definitely not okay so I got to find my autonomous boat now before it gets hit by a one of those things my uh power supply for the day got water logged now it's reading 0% on the battery so that ain't good W I'm driving into a boil there a bunch of fish jumping or something well the boat is upright that's a good sign let's see where we're at now not too far offshore I can see the rainbow light on the boat that's it right out there so luckily I don't see any big boats coming through the channel here as our little autonomous fella enters the middle so all this data being the Telemetry data and the live video here is coming through the cellular link on the Halo so then I have my phone's Hotpot connected to the computer here so that's how the computer's getting Wi-Fi and that's how I can see the data so this thing has unlimited range as long as it's within cell service pretty slick tragically it seems the EF Delta here will not output AC power since the bottom part got water logged I bumped the speed up to 1.8 m/s on the boat um I'm going to turn this computer off now because I need to save battery since I don't think I'll be able to charge it we're just putting along here Into the Blue Yonder oh wow it's starting to get light [Music] already I'm picking up Telemetry data on the tx16s here as well cuz I've got that set up to communicate with the Rd pilot so that's cool we got a bogey hopefully they don't run into the boat the boat's over there thatat just passed behind my boat so my boat is much closer to me than I thought so I just gave her some gas snuck up on it here but I I'm hesitant to get too close cuz it's an autonomous boat I feel like I just need to let it do its thing you know keep my distance I don't want to be a helicopter parent it's going to be a nice day like there's a fog Bank over there but no clouds above us wow the the water level sensors for the inside of the hole are green and that means there's no water in the holes that's good so that red light in the middle means that it's still running on the LF P4 batteries and it has not yet switched to the lithium batteries on top it's not going very fast that's for sure I'm going to try and increase the maximum pwm in Rd pilot wow that is a big ship about to enter into the fog spooky the first thing that I noticed here upon connecting is that the speed is at 0.4 m/s which is way lower than it should be it should be like 1.8 so I think that probably means that there's seaweed in the props let's go have a look I just took it out of auto mode so it's just floating now uh seaweed I don't see seaweed huh weird I'll put it back into auto mode Let's see on the road again what the heck is that big red thing ahead of me the fog is closing in highly suspicious it's still only going 0.5 m/s but the Waypoint speed is set to 1.8 that's weird see that that's a big problem for a little autonomous boat there's a lot of junk in the water out here probably need more robust prop guards I can't see anything on the props from here so this is Banbridge Island here and the mission I have planned drives all the way around it the boat just got devoured by the fog I no longer see it I drove ahead and now it's gone I wonder what this barge is for I mean presumably it's for cargo but I have no idea why it would be here this is just like a residential Cove it looks like that thing is huge wow okay I need to go find the autonomous boat now I don't have any sight of it it should be coming this way oh I think I actually see it out there oh yeah there it is look at that porpuses or dolphins or something o spooky that thing just popped out of the fog so the build pump lights on the left hole are out that's not great I wonder why it just went through a wake and took a wave over the bow if I can't get this laptop charging we're in bad shape because that's like the primary way I need to monitor the boat so yeah this is important let's try to unplug this big connector see what happens that thing's getting pretty close to shore over there there's also these boats ahead that are mored out here I hope it doesn't hit them it just turned it looks like it's starting to make its way around them there's a lot of dolphins over there I should send the Drone up yeah the fog has finally rolled in and I can't find the boat so I'll keep looking with my eyeballs for a little bit and if I can't find it with those then I'll see if the computer has enough battery left to locate it oh actually there it is right there it's pretty close to the shore here I think uh the imagery data that I was looking at when I planned the mission must have shown high tide so I assumed that it was going to be further out from Shore but now it's low tide so it's closer in there's a lot of current in here we're up to 1.9 m/s um this is kind of like a river right now because the tide is flowing in under the bridge we're getting a free ride now the bridge is coming up and there's a boat going under it I wasn't sure exactly where the bridge pilings were so I kind of planned the mission right towards the center of it so we're kind of heading straight for that other boat oh well doesn't look like it'll be a problem oh yeah yeah you can really see how much current there is in the Wake behind that buoy that it's like a freaking river that ain't good there's smoke coming out of it it's definitely ruined our dear little boat there kind of looks like it's going to run into these things whatever they are I think we're good just missed them there was a seal checking out the boat yeah I can see him poking his head up behind it I keep hearing pops and more smoke com out of that thing oh there's another oh oh I have a rope tied to it so that I can throw it in the water if I need to I feel like it's not the battery that's popping because the battery is still reading 56 volts I think it's just electrical components that are popping what's going to happen what's going to happen oh they went right by that boat's going awfully fast oh and it passed to my boat still to this day I've never seen someone stop and take a closer look at one of my autonomous boats [Music] [Music] [Music] it's so smooth out here weird bird buoy the hell where' that freaking boat go I lost it my brief check-in with Mission planner said that the battery was at 11.1 volts and if that's true that's pretty low I wouldn't expect it to last all that much longer and apparently it's still over there even though I cannot see it at all and I can't even see it through the long lens so I guess I'll just sit here and see if it shows up look at that there's a seal going to inspect the boat also there's a yacht that's coming straight for me there's another yacht coming straight for me that way seals right behind it oh you probably hears the pwm of the motors and is like what the heck is that that guy decided to go right in between me and the shore there it's pretty small Gap kind of [Music] surprising oh there's so much seaweed in the props oh no can you see that oh they're green no wonder the battery's almost dead look at what we were pulling around got a freaking sushi burrito here there's more Jesus wow that's a lot of extra drag I can't believe it was even moving okay got the props all cleared off let's uh push it back out there and then put it into auto mode see what Full Throttle looks like with the clean props that's way faster than it was going look at that it's hauling ass okay it's going back into auto mode that's where all my battery voltage went into spinning that seaweed into a circle G less than 5 minutes later and there's already seaweed on the prop I can tell there's a lot already holy crap there's a ton already Jesus this is why autonomous missions are tough out here cuz there's freaking Christmas trees in the water so looks like we're getting pretty close to halfway done with the mission I don't think we'll make it the whole way though because of that seaweed screwing up our efficiency I know I know everyone's going to be saying why don't you put solar panels on it well it used to have solar panels plus if there's no seaweed on the props it has enough battery power to go all day long so you don't really need need solar panels unless you're trying to cross the Atlantic or something which I'm not I mean that would be cool yeah but you need something way more robust than this boat for that to work it's going through some pretty dirty water I'll have to check and see if there's anything on the props that dude was checking the boat out with his binoculars uhoh who jeez so I'm coming up on a y in the channel if I go that way I go back to Seattle if I go this way I go to where they keep the aircraft carriers I'm going to spot with some weird current convergence going on there's like whirl pools and some Eddy currents and stuff so I'm going to send the Drone up and see what it looks like from above I've also been hearing some Dolphins surfacing so I'll look for those too oh there's one I just got a fat whiff of burning battery scent [Music] whoa that guy's not messing around so I'm keeping an extra close eye on the boat in this channel here because it's a Ferry Lane uh fairies go in and out of here and so do big aircraft carriers I think my boat's off right now and I'm just drifting with the current that's some fast current this gu's going Upstream it's a tough battle got lunch going here M grity look at that jelly fish wow this could be a real situation that fairy does not look like he's turning very fast and my boat's right there going that way presumably going to hit a waypoint and turn that way pretty quickly I might need to take manual override control here that would be a bad fate for my little boat that looks fine I'm going to go back into auto mode wow that thing is huge and it's going so fast those things rip yeah they're not messing around going into the wind and into to the current I'm only doing 0.6 m/s not great probably also have some seaweed stuck on there not sure oh that looks like one of the highspeed water taxis a that led on the far bow right there is red that means there's water in the hole oh yeah I can see water kind of trying to come up that tube there must not be enough water to actually get the pump primed and flowing and there's the big fairy going along there's something going on over there now we're starting to get some wind chop as we round this point up here and start getting the northern winds coming at us oh it's shallow here I can see the bottom this thing is getting pretty thrashed by the waves oh there's another one that one's trying to get up well that one has a tag on oh you made it wow they're just basking in the Sun soaking up the Rays things are like meat [Music] Torpedoes I just took these two batteries off because they were getting pretty wet and they're not sealed at all so uh we'll see how long it lasts with the lithium iron phosphate batteries once the voltage drops enough the bms's will just turn them off so I don't think it'll last too much longer oh it looks like it just shut off I guess the BMS finally turned off the batteries huh I wonder what that thing's all about yeah the BMS is finally tripped so all the electronics on the boat are off that's a wrap for this Mission okay I'm going to put this thing on my boat and then head back this is going to be a bumpy ride so the Puget Sound one this time failing to complete the mission was a bit of a bummer but at least now I have a good goal to aim for with future autonomous boat projects obviously I'll need to figure out a new propulsion method since underwater propellers have proven to be too vulnerable to seaweed even in the past when I've tried out much tighter prop guard cages they've still let fine seaweed through you'll have the same problem with a water jet like what jet skis use unless you use a really fine mesh to cover the intake but doing that is terrible for efficiency but don't worry I have some ideas that's what the next video of this boat will be about here I discovered that if you hop behind a big yacht it makes your ride much smoother W waa that boat just came out of the Ballard Locks that's a big boat so it was a bummer that the EF Delta got ruined because these things are super expensive I disassembled it and it was clear that most of the circuit boards had fried but luckily all the battery cells were still fine so I can totally just wire up my own BMS and use this battery for a different project in the future now let's have a look inside the holes oh God that's so much water why you know work little pump this is probably the culprit right here here no wonder if fre can stopped working the liquid level sensor is completely corroded I feel like that's a bad design I'm very impressed that these motors kept working even though they were partially submerged you can see there's less water in this front compartment but there's still quite a bit I mean the motor was certainly like a third submerged and also the autopilot kept working even though presumably this motor was flipping water all over the place and it was just super humid in here so that's pretty impressive how about this one huh not much water in there at all one's almost completely dry oo it does smell like burnt out electronics though aha it looks like something lit on fire on the back of the Arduino do you see that brown right there oh yeah that's the culprit right there the voltage regulator or something on the back of the Arduino let's see if the one in the other hole is roasty too let us see oh yep that one looks burnt out too I'm guessing that's an over voltage problem or over current I was using a digital out pin to drive these little um relays these are supposed to be logic level relays but maybe they were pulling too much juice let's see if the pump can still do its job if I just plug it directly into a battery oh yeah

Channel: rctestflight

Views: 217,366

Keywords: autonomous, boat, drone, rc, ardupilot, rover, gps

Id: DkfQSabGPDg

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2023