2019-04-17, 04:23 PM
I am doing the same thing - my old Autohelm wheel drive was falling apart and slipping, but pypilot was able to control it using Sean's motor controller. I bought an ST4000+ wheel drive on ebay and hope to get it running soon. (I needed the motor power connector and hours of Googling found an off the shelf equivalent for $7.)
You don't necessarily need rudder feedback. Pypilot can tell when you hit the stops by monitoring motor current (maybe not the right word). That's the way my Autohelm did it anyway. But I expect the Raymarine rudder position is just a variable resistor and could be connected to your motor controller and only help things.
You won't want to use the fluxgate compass. The IMU is cheap and much higher tech.
The control head is probably not going to end up part of your solution. Most of us seem to be using VNC on a tablet to use the OpenCPN plugin. I noticed Sean has the OpenCPN plugins for Android on Google Play. That might be a little better. He's also discussed on here how to add an infrared remote control. I don't think it is built in like the stand alone pypilot.
I do wish for more control options too. The WilhelmSK app on iOS has a Raymarine autopilot interface, why not pypilot? Maybe that could be interfaced. Sean talked about a potential Android app at one time. I don't want to lose the simplicity of a basic autopilot with its few big red buttons. 99% of the time I have no destination or route, I'm just sailing and want to hold the current course, go up a little, go down a little, and quickly take manual control.
You don't necessarily need rudder feedback. Pypilot can tell when you hit the stops by monitoring motor current (maybe not the right word). That's the way my Autohelm did it anyway. But I expect the Raymarine rudder position is just a variable resistor and could be connected to your motor controller and only help things.
You won't want to use the fluxgate compass. The IMU is cheap and much higher tech.
The control head is probably not going to end up part of your solution. Most of us seem to be using VNC on a tablet to use the OpenCPN plugin. I noticed Sean has the OpenCPN plugins for Android on Google Play. That might be a little better. He's also discussed on here how to add an infrared remote control. I don't think it is built in like the stand alone pypilot.
I do wish for more control options too. The WilhelmSK app on iOS has a Raymarine autopilot interface, why not pypilot? Maybe that could be interfaced. Sean talked about a potential Android app at one time. I don't want to lose the simplicity of a basic autopilot with its few big red buttons. 99% of the time I have no destination or route, I'm just sailing and want to hold the current course, go up a little, go down a little, and quickly take manual control.