What do I need

[Lspacenl]

Hi I am new to this forum and I have some difficuklty finding my way around.
I have a DDufour 1800 saioboat and an (old) tillerpilot that is  eqyuiped with an electronic compass and nothing else.
I would like to convert this tillerpilot to something more usefull I can preprogram and or control to use gps and or waypoints. Everything tells me I have found the right place for that here but I can't seem to find a concrete list of what I need to have and or buy and what I must cobble together myself.
Probably I am just bad at searching but I would be grateful if somebody could point me in the right direction.

[PaddyB]

have a look in here >
https://pypilot.org/

[Lspacenl]

Thanks, But I have and that's how I got here.
It might be the answers I seek are in the shop section but that is unavailable now. Everything i saw there is very tantalising but i can't seem to find anything concrete.

[Sailoog]

https://github.com/pypilot/workbook/wiki

[MigGat]

Hello Lspacenl, I was recently in your same situation, even if i've been in this forum and playing around with pretty much all hardware for almost 3 years.

The Pypilot is the most complex setup in my opinion, because it's meant to be modular and open enough so anyone with electronic skill (which I don't have) can make pretty much it's own setup. For me, it was daunting, and I read the docs that Sailoog posted THREE TIMES.

So I'll try to summarize what I have, and let's hope it can get you started. Basically there are 4 pieces on this puzzle:

1) Linear actuator. Is the motor that actually moves your tiller. There are several options, and if you search for "linear actuator" in the forum, you'll find several discussions around it. I decided to go the easy path and purchased this one: https://pcnautic.nl/nl/autopilot/raymari...ent-detail which is a replacement for the Raymarine q047. This would be more than powerful enough for your boat.

2) Motor controller. This is the pieces of hardware that tells the motor to push the rod forward or backward in order to steer the boat. It also supplies the proper current to the motor. I would STRONGLY advise to buy the one on the pypilot store when it's back open. 

3) "The brain". Here, sadly, you have more than one choices. For me the easiest way was to use the Raspberry as the only brain, but it requires to have an IMU connected to it. Another options is to purchase the Pypilot hat from pypilot store, which already has an IMU and is pretty much plug and play (never tested, just read about it). I think there's a third option, to purchase the Tinypilot, which I think is a Raspberry Pi Zero with all the required software.

4) No matter which "brain" option you pick, you'll end up using Pypilot software, which again, you'll find a lot of useful information on the linked docs.

That being said, do you *really* want to convert your existing tiller pilot? It was my first idea, but it requires skills I don't have. If you so, you most likely will only be able to reuse the linear actuator. Everything else inside the case would be removed, and you could put the motor controller inside of it. Look around the forum, I remember someone did this to an ST2000.

Hope this helped a bit!

[Lspacenl]

Hello MigGat,
Thanks for the reply, it is really helpfull and now at least I know what I am looking for and what I need to study. (I am also not much use where electronics are concerned.) But luckily I have some good mates who know quite a bit and I have the backup of a maker space in may area for backup and moral support.

It was my original idea to use my tiller pilot to house most of the electronics (it's watertight) and use the motor as the linear actuator. ( It already fits on the boat)
And I find the thing is quite fiddly to set up as it is right now.
But who knows I've quite a ways to go before crossing that particular bridge.

I'll keep you posted.