Much of the complexity involved
communication between various technologies.
Some components, like the INA219 current
sensor breakouts from Adafruit, EM-406 GPS
from SparkFun, and LSM303 compass from
Pololu, had sample Arduino code that made
testing easy. Others, like the Quake Q9612 Iridium
transceiver, were more difficult to integrate.
At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Dylan met
Ryan Muller who joined the team and spent
weekends writing code in the garage for the
boat to communicate with the Iridium module.
Nowadays, options like the RockBlock module
make adding satellite communications to
embedded projects much easier.
A landmark day for our team was Scout’s first
successful autonomous mission navigation,
which was supervised over lunch at a nearby
sandwich shop. “That was one of our proudest
days,” recalls Dylan. “One of the few that didn’t
end in paddling after a runaway craft, debugging
the IMU, or falling asleep at the bench.” For the
team, it was the first day of true autonomy, and a
taste of encouraging reward that helped make up
for skipped hangouts and late nights.
The original “two-week timeframe” stretched
into three years and Scout accumulated 2,500
followers on Facebook. Our local paper The
Sakonnet Times ran several articles on the project
including one titled “A Slow Boat to Spain.”
And finally, on August 24, 2013, after two failed
excursions and countless other tests, Scout
took to the high seas on its third, record-setting
attempt. (Make: reporter Andrew Terranova wrote
about the launch at makezine.com/2013/08/27/
transatlantic-drone-takes-to-the-sea.)
A local legend by this point, Scout’s public
tracking page amassed 750,000 views during its
final 5-week journey. It powered through days and
most nights, occasionally falling asleep on cloudy
days. The page was updated with the latest data
every 20 minutes. Friends and followers jokingly
complained that it was hard to do their work while
Scout team, Seasats
OCEAN SCIENCE Robot Boats
The 12-footer partially built, with the help of neighbors,
friends, and the crew.
Scout’s first launch was a well-attended event. A
ceremonial cannon was shot to mark the occasion,
and Brendan cooked barbecue as Tom finished up the
tracking page. Note the hazy conditions which persisted
for a week, leading to Scout’s first recovery.
Early electronics for Scout.
Second attempt, a nighttime launch to take advantage
of the fully charged batteries. Scout traveled 50 miles
before its servo failed and it was recovered once again.
38 makezine.com
M78_036-43_SeaSats_F1.indd 38M78_036-43_SeaSats_F1.indd 38 7/12/21 4:07 PM7/12/21 4:07 PM
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.