| s/y Fiona - our Bruce Roberts Offshore 44' |
 | |  | |  | |  | |
Copyright (c) 2005-2023 Martin Erlandson, Sweden
The alternator needed attention or rather I tought so. So I bought new carbon brushes just in case.
In 2008-isch I replaced the ball bearings in the alternator and added thin epoxy to the winding as a precausion.
The carbon brushes where fine at the time.
In my former life I worked as an electrician on Heavy duty trucks and notice that what broke a generator was bearings, slip rings, brushes or corrossion in the stator winding.
Surprice. The brushes had were little wear. The design is quite clever - even if Lucas Systems have lesser reputation in some car models - I do have experience... The brushes is connected to the and of axels slipring meaning that the center brush is almost not weared at all. Great design Lucas!
Well a new outer brush was soldered in and I have a couple in spare.
Other SPRING activities where new birds, more beer and renovated the headlights for one of my cars.
The reflector lence where bad due to high temperatur from the xenon bulb. New reflectors didn't match perfectly so some surgery was needed. Sanding and clear coat on the plastic makes wonders!
New gate lines and pelican hooks. The seawater inlets got polished - where are the picture when they are polished? These are not polished...
During summer while being in a harbour at Malmön we had a short rainstorm - +30 knots - to test out new sprayhood.
For once we where moored in the right direction - wind from forward, not aft... :-)
I bought a small "emergency" diving bottle. Just wrap it on your back, open and breath - it's light. Not a Poseidon Cyclon but works quite good. 200 bar.
So to be able to refill the Smaco I also got a new 230 bar bottle.
Co-Welder #3 was testing it out with security Dog #1 on overwatch.
I guess that you could get 15 minutes at "propeller depth".
Autopilot - again.
Yes my old home made bang-bang autopilot needs to be upgraded. This is a Neco drive at 18 Kg and silly strong.
I have already incorporated this into the steering system and 10 years ago I made a simple digital control logic that worked but the servo unit is driving by relays whitch is the bang-bang method according to me. That toghether with a old compass it was jerky and consumed power...
So out with the old 1970 "electronics" and in with stuff from 2018 -isch.
System is based on PyPilot created by Sean D'Epagnier. Thank you Sailor!
So in this end of the Pypilot system there is is a motorcontroller/servocontroller that talks to an advanced Motordriver that runs the Neco motor. Feed back of rudder position is buildt in in the Neco drive unit.
So Pypilot is running on the Main Nav PC, Rasberry Pi 4. Via USB it talks to the Motorcontroller/Arduino Nano 328 inside the Neco. I'm using a 10 meter active USB cable between the RPi4 and Neco drive.
The Nano talks to the Poloulo Simple (should be single ;-) controller, SMC G2 18v25, which is setup as a standard RC Servo. (This controller is very advanced and with some development it could replace the Nano)
