From-scratch build for wheel steering (hardware)

[seandepagnier]

Hi,
About a year ago I installed Pypilot hardware on my sailboat - a Roberts 36B Ketch. It has wheel steering with cables to a quadrant. I entertained using some sort of linear actuator on the quadrant but went for an electric motor on the wheel pedestal. Initially I looked for a wiper motor but a guy at a car dismantler suggested a power steering motor  - in my case from a Nissan Cube. Many more modern vehicles have electric steering assist rather than hydraulic and are available for 12 volt supply. This motor is beautifully engineered and has amazing torque - easily able to steer the boat using a toothed urethane belt and about a 10 to 1 reduction using toothed alloy sprockets. The belt and sprockets are such that you can override the drive from the motor if you (briefly) want to counter the AP. The motor is set up on a slide with a lever to lock it into or out of drive mode - accessible right at the wheel so you can manually steer to a course, lock the Pypilot in on that course and engage the AP drive.

I circumnavigated the South Island of New Zealand last southern hemisphere summer using this arrangement - very successfully. Super low power usage so no worries powering it from solar panels. So successful that it completely displaced my windvane self-steering into second place - even when more or less hove-to in 40 knot+ conditions in Cook Strait.

I cannot speak too highly of Pypilot and the installation I have and can supply a video of it in action if required - and can somehow get a 50mb video to load.

The only issue I now have is getting the Pypilot plug-in to work with OpenCPN 5.2 - but I'll address that elsewhere on this forum.

Cheers
Ted

 
I haven't heard of a power steering motor until now, but this sounds like a big upgrade from the wiper motor.


Would be great to see the video or even pictures.