Back to life with Arduino

In standard blog fashion, i've gone silent with posts. My personal life and "workaphilia" has led me to focus my energies on other (analog) pursuits. I'm now out of industry and in the protective cocoon of academia. I start my doctorate in a week and have picked up a new project that will mesh with my sailing interests and , hopefully, eventually extend to my degree.

We have great electronics to give real-time stats and boat speed and heading through the velocitek and tactic. However, they are pretty closed and, hence, it is difficult to get data off of these tools. Furthermore, the senors have (at least at output) low sampling rate (gps is about 2 hz.) In addition, there isn't any software to be able to directly compare individual boat performances across a fleet.

Thus, I've sought to try to develop a low cost, open-source hardware to be able to measure various dynamic properties of the boat. I am currently focusing on boat position and axial orientation (gps and gyroscope.) My dream is to achieve two fold: a) to be able to empirically measure two-boat testing and eventually b) create enough data for a machine learning application. I still need to think of a name for my project...

In my first prototype, I've ordered the Arduino Uno, a triple-axis gyroscope, and a gps breakout. I'm excited to have great a gryo at ~30 kHz (!) and a gps at 10 Hz. These high sampling rates should allow me to do some smoothing and get accurate recordings. My brother is already proving to be an awesome asset, as he has already been playing around with an Uno, building a camera slider.

Quickly, I've gotten the gyro to talk to the Uno and produce output. I'm waiting for the arrival of my gps unit, but I have started developing a library to help keep my onboard software organized. Hopefully, I'll have all the hardware talking and logging by a week or two. I'm already thinking about adding wifi shields to get real time info out. From there, I'll build a second sensor nest.

Our sailing season ends in 2 months, so I'll be on a crunch to getting something out. In mid-september, I'll be very happy to have to have two devices talking to a android device. Then, I can start writing higher level api (android side) to start making two-boat comparisons!