If you read my previous post you'll see I have a fish/depth finder that I was trying to reverse engineer the protocol of.
Since then I decided to build a radio controlled boat to drag the fish finder around. The idea being that the boat will drive around the lake logging the depth and GPS position allowing me to build up a map of the lake bed.
After an initial failed attempt at a rather dubious airboat (that flipped over seconds into it's first test run) I decided I wanted something:
a. relatively cheap and simple to build
b. very stable/sturdy
c. able to carry a decent payload
d. have a battery life measured in hours rather than minutes.
After looking at various options I decided to base my boat on a Springer Tug, but increased in size by ~25%.
The idea was to build it over the xmas holidays, though it took me rather longer than that!
The hull sides and deck were cut from 6mm birch ply, and the base from 1.5mm birch ply. The various spars and other bits were from whatever wood I had lying around the garage.
For the motor I decided to use an Mtroniks M600, which in hindsight is possibly slightly over kill. I think I 500 motor would have been plenty.
The boat was predominantly glued together using 5-minute epoxy (though in the middle of winter it seemed to take rather longer than 5 minutes to cure!)
When complete I coated the inside with several coats of yacht varnish from the local pound shop, and coated the outside with several coats of black spray paint, again from the pound shop.
I built it fairly heavy as I'd heard springers typically needed a lot of ballast. I obviously didn't build it heavy enough, as my initial flotation test showed I still needed several kilograms adding to get it to sit right!
The original plan was to use a pair of 6V 4.5Ah batteries, but as so much extra weight was required I thought I may as well use extra batteries as ballast and doubled it to four!
To control the boat I purchased a FlySky FS-i6 transmitter and receiver for £29 from ebay. I have to say, I'm incredibly impressed with it so far.
I'll try to get some better pictures, including some of the inside, but for now, here it is on one of it's first test runs:
