DIY Sailing Instrument

[brett_howard]

A few years back I built a wind instrument and I've been using it for years now and really appreciate its functionality.

Here is a picture of it on my Catalina 22:

This first version was somewhat difficult to build and the software took me quite some time to get to where I was happy with it. I do have the original Arduino C++ code and I was about to try and compile it again to dig into fixing a problem with my setup when I found out that all the libraries had been updated and I remember there was an incompatibility I had to modify the libraries to make them work and it was just more hassle than it was worth.

So instead I'm deciding to do a new version of the wind instrument. This version will still be using Adafruit hardware but I'm going to redo things using an RP2040 based Adalogger rather than the M0 that was used in the first version. I'm also planning on replacing the Alphanumeric display with an OLED feather that also comes with buttons. Then I'm redesigning the case so that you can use Adafruit's breakout boards that I used in the first version with out soldering and adding connectors near as much.

I'm planning on simple instructions on how to build one but it should require fairly little soldering (if you can solder 0.1" headers that is all about all that is really required). Then you 3D print the case and heat set brass inserts into the plastic case. then the boards screw into the case and plug together... As I finish the first one I'll take pictures and show how it goes together. I hope to have the software done by this Summer but so far I have a working menu that drives the buttons and display on the OLED. Once I get more hardware I'll get the LEDs going and bring on real sensor data (right now its just random data).

Any interest in this or am I the only one? I'd say its going to cost about 300 dollars for a system including the anemometer. But I'm probably forgetting pieces... Its still cheaper than the big box marine guys who are usually well over a grand for a full system and they don't have the weather sensors.

Here is a picture of what the new version is looking like at the moment in the current mechanical design:

I do also have a NMEA based system on my other boat and I'm considering making an NMEA2000 flight recorder black box that basically does the GPX logging portion of this project but without the display. I'll be doing that open source as well stored here: https://bitbucket.org/Brett-Howard/bthblackbox/src/main/

 

[brett_howard]

Getting closer.... Just realizing I need to model that battery on the GPS or the back won't fit.... Dang it.

 

[Davidasailor26]

Sounds pretty interesting. What are you using for the anemometer? When I was looking to build my own wind sensor finding a good option there was the hardest part.

 

[colemj]

I'm also curious what anemometer is used, as these tend to be expensive.

Sub-$300 wind instruments with transducers exist commercially: Clipper Wind System V2 w/Masthead Transducer & Cover

Mark

 

[Project_Mayhem]

Looks good so far. You weren't kidding when you said there's very little soldering. I'm about to build an LED dimmer controller because I can't find anything that's simple and easy to use.

 

[brett_howard]

Sounds pretty interesting. What are you using for the anemometer? When I was looking to build my own wind sensor finding a good option there was the hardest part.

https://www.peetbros.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=137

I am using this one in the Marine Grade fashion from Peet Bros. I bought this for the V1 version of the wind instrument and that part of things I believe is still working just fine. If you really dig into their design its just 2 magnetic reed switches and its very elegant in how simple the anemometer is. The only pain is that its a bit difficult to decode the pulses into speeds and directions but Peet Bros actually helped there and provided algorithms to get wind speed for their anemometer. They're still made to this day as well which is why I chose them the first time.

Really great products and I even broke the first one cause I'm an idiot. I had it setup on a photography tripod in the back yard for debugging and a gust of wind knocked it over and it smashed into the ground. Upon telling the company about this they simply sent me a new one free of charge. So pretty awesome people too!

 

[brett_howard]

I'm also curious what anemometer is used, as these tend to be expensive.

Sub-$300 wind instruments with transducers exist commercially: Clipper Wind System V2 w/Masthead Transducer & Cover

Mark

Yea I'd looked at this one a while back... But I wanted to be able to do the environmental sensors and the GPS and I wanted the trip logging functionality for my log book too. I'm a nerd and I keep a paper log and having this instrument has made my log much more accurate and a lot less lick my finger and guess...

I should add that their solution has a major advantage to mine in that its actually water proof. With the SD card interface on and the USB-C opening and the buttons and all I don't think that I could come up with a good way to seal it up and make it water proof... But I'm also not really all that skilled in that type of design either so maybe once done if I put my mind to it I could grow in that area and come up with something.

 

[Davidasailor26]

https://www.peetbros.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=137

I am using this one in the Marine Grade fashion from Peet Bros. I bought this for the V1 version of the wind instrument and that part of things I believe is still working just fine. If you really dig into their design its just 2 magnetic reed switches and its very elegant in how simple the anemometer is. The only pain is that its a bit difficult to decode the pulses into speeds and directions but Peet Bros actually helped there and provided algorithms to get wind speed for their anemometer. They're still made to this day as well which is why I chose them the first time.

Really great products and I even broke the first one cause I'm an idiot. I had it setup on a photography tripod in the back yard for debugging and a gust of wind knocked it over and it smashed into the ground. Upon telling the company about this they simply sent me a new one free of charge. So pretty awesome people too!

That’s good to know. I already have an NMEA sensor on my mast, but I’ve been wanting to build a wind sensor that could be mounted on one of our club’s race marks. We have a mark that’s far enough from land to get clear air, but close enough to our clubhouse that I think I could get signals from it with a LoRa radio.

 

[brett_howard]

That’s good to know. I already have an NMEA sensor on my mast, but I’ve been wanting to build a wind sensor that could be mounted on one of our club’s race marks. We have a mark that’s far enough from land to get clear air, but close enough to our clubhouse that I think I could get signals from it with a LoRa radio.

I've set things up on the first wind instrument to have the mast head end at fairly low power because its got a fairly small solar panel. On a more substantial tower than a mast you could probably give a lil more solar or transmit less often and increase the power a bit. I bought the LoRa stuff cause I wanted to play with it and ended up playing with it less than I thought I would. So I really should probably use the cheaper packet radios but for exactly solutions as you mention David the LoRa just seemed like it would be a fun option. You could probably also install a better antenna on a real tower as I just manually cut antennas out of some coax soldered to some u.fl connectors.

Which if I want to try and make this simple for people to build I should probably find an off the shelf antenna for these now that I think about it.

 

[brett_howard]

Looks good so far. You weren't kidding when you said there's very little soldering. I'm about to build an LED dimmer controller because I can't find anything that's simple and easy to use.

I have a small LED that I use as a night light that comes on automatically in front of the head door on my bigger boat and I needed a way to dim that LED down. I just wanted a simple PWM controller with a knob and I found this to be adequate for that need: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073R7H52B

Not sure if it works for your need but since I'd fairly recently used that and it worked for my needs I figured I'd share.

 

[brett_howard]

That’s good to know. I already have an NMEA sensor on my mast, but I’ve been wanting to build a wind sensor that could be mounted on one of our club’s race marks. We have a mark that’s far enough from land to get clear air, but close enough to our clubhouse that I think I could get signals from it with a LoRa radio.

I should also add... I've got an NMEA2000 wind instrument on the mast of my bigger boat and thus I wanted to add the GPX trip logging to the larger boat but I've already got a full NMEA2000 setup on that boat. So I'm hoping to do a black box flight recorder type project where I'll just have a box with a single NMEA cable coming out and it'll have a micro SD card in it that will start logging all the NMEA2000 data that it can to the card whenever you leave your slip location. That way you can use a GPX application and see a map of your trip but you can also click on any datapoint on the trip line and see the wind speed, water depth, vessel attitude, whatever you want or more to the point whatever you have available on the NMEA network.... I'll probably start on that one when I hit a slow spot on the wind instrument... The code for it will also be open source and found here: https://bitbucket.org/Brett-Howard/bthblackbox/src/main/

 

[colemj]

Yea I'd looked at this one a while back... But I wanted to be able to do the environmental sensors and the GPS and I wanted the trip logging functionality for my log book too. I'm a nerd and I keep a paper log and having this instrument has made my log much more accurate and a lot less lick my finger and guess...

I don't believe you mentioned it doing all of that in your original post.

Is there a reason you don't have it mounted to see from the helm? Or is that position in view of the helm?

Mark

 

[brett_howard]

I don't believe you mentioned it doing all of that in your original post.

Is there a reason you don't have it mounted to see from the helm? Or is that position in view of the helm?

Mark

Yea it does a lot that I've not mentioned quite yet... But that stuff is what the old instrument does and the new instrument I don't have the code done yet so I don't want to go spouting things it can do until it can do them....

But this has barometric pressure and temp sensors as well as a full 9 DOG IMU. So it can indicate heel and it can use all of its sensors to give you a compass and it can calculate true wind and show you that by subtracting out the boat's movement. It also will give you statistics at the end of your sail such as average wind speed, average wind direction, max heel angle... And then all of these stats should get written into a folder for the year and then inside of that folder will be GPX files that when opened can display a map of every trip you've taken and you can click on the track to see more information about the state of the vessel at that time.

I have it setup where you write you home slip location into the SD card in the text file and then when you leave that location it starts collecting stats and when you get back to the slip it locks things down and writes a record into a CSV file that at the moment matches the format of the manual logbook I pictured above.

The real hope and dream is that I get this thing done enough to be functional by summer... Then I'll setup the auto pilot and toodle around on the lake while I think of new features and try to implement them before I get to the other side of the lake. hehe.

Oh and yes that location inside the boat can be easily seen from the helm position through the companionway. Now that I think about that I may need to add into the menu some brightness settings cause the last version of this had an ambient light sensor and it set the brightness of the display automatically based on sensed levels.

The first version used a gesture sensor that you waved your hand in front of it from top to bottom or bottom to top or left vs right... The theory was that I was going to be able to seal things and shoot the IR from that sensor through a plastic window. Turns out in the end getting that sensor to go through a window without just light piping through the plastic was near impossible. So I had to cut a hole to let the light out. Then the user Karate Kid user interface as I called it was good enough for me but flaky enough that I was the only one who could use the instrument. Thus why this version is just going back to normal buttons.