The Main Systems Design

By Dermot Tynan, about 11 years ago.

In terms of the system architecture, we're planning on using two separate computer control planes to manage and steer the boat from start to finish.

At the lowest level, a custom Atmel (ATmega8) board will act as a basic "autohelm", driving the boat to a specific True Wind Angle or TWA. As the breeze shifts, so too will the boat, to maintain that TWA. This is a basic PID algorithm for controlling the rudder and mainsail in relation to the specified TWA and is very similar in design and implementation to your average sailboat autohelm.

• February 20, 2013
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BB Phone Home.

By Dermot Tynan, about 11 years ago.

There is a race requirement which states that "Any boat which fails to transmit for more than 10 consecutive days will be disqualified."

While there are a number of ways of reporting position data back to Mission Control, from elaborate HF transmitters through to simple satellite position locators, we'll be using a Rock Block satellite modem. These devices can send byte sequences back to dry land via the Iridium satellite network. We will be sending four updates a day, of exactly 250 bytes each. Each message will include two or more payloads.

• February 21, 2013
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The Software...

By Dermot Tynan, about 11 years ago.

I've been asked recently, about the software platforms used on board Beoga Beag. This seems as good a time as any, to talk about the various layers. As mentioned previously, the lower layer is a custom board, running an ATmega8 Atmel processor. The software (Igor and Otto) is custom-written in C for the boat.

• March 19, 2013
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Mission 001 - Galway Bay

By Dermot Tynan, almost 11 years ago.

As the hull is now watertight, and we're mere weeks away from having a sealed hull with keel and rig, it's OK to start looking at actually getting this thing to sail.

Up until now, I've been somewhat obsessed with getting the physical aspects of the boat to a certain juncture. The reasoning is simple; until there's a boat, all of this other stuff is just a waste of time. Well, now there's a boat...

• June 7, 2013
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REDIS

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

After a lunchtime conversation with a friend of mine, I ditched some of the earlier design considerations around message-passing and MQ-based systems in favour of the NoSQL database Redis.

• October 26, 2013
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