Pypilot working on my Nicholson 44

[xfactor99]

Major milestone today! I removed the Neco Drive Unit from the boat for examination, turns out one of the brushes was sticking. Having cleaned everything up it passed all Daniel Fua's tests. So now I've reinstalled in the boat, with Sean's motor controller driving the relays. Everything seems to be working fine but sea trials await!

Next step (after using it for a while) is to plan to drive the motor directly rather than through the Nico relays. I'm still wavering between a home-built Pololu-based driver and Sean's new high power driver.

Anyway, reason for the post was to thank Sean for his wonderful work and everyone on the group for their help and information. I was facing a multi-thousand pound bill to replace the Neco with a modern commercial drive; Tinypilot + motor controller + a few relays less than £200 for a far more capable (and adjustable) unit. Rock on open source!

Hi Phil,
great to hear .... 

I just completed a 500 NM singelhanded (with Dog) mainly on Autopilot.
I had only on little problem, that was that the AP stoped working once.
It was the pololu wich after connecting it to the Laptopp and playing a little arround
came back ....
Anyway I carry everything (pi-zero, arduino, polou, imu) as spare.

So please continue reporting your progress.
Save sailing 
Andreas