08M Self calibrating rudder position indicator

mickm2au

Member
This project was for a friend who needed rudder position indicators on his boat.
Thanks to Steliosm for the idea of using servo's with needles attached for the actual indicators. It uses two pots linked to the rudder system to provide ADC signals to the 08M from which it derives the servo driving data. The main feature which may be of use to others is that it can be calibrated with the use of a single push button to use any portion or any angle of the pot attached to the rudder.

Details are in the software file.

There are plenty of comments in the software as I prefer not to use symbols

Any comments ...other than the non use of symbols... are welcome.

Cheers
Mick
 

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mickm2au

Member
A bit more info...not just for boats

Just a bit more info which may be of interest...

The program can be used to scale whatever ADC input voltage range you have ( if greater than 5V you'll still need a voltage divider) to give whatever angle of servo movement you want right up to the full range, by just a couple of button presses. The lower end voltage dosn't even need to be zero. Obviously the smaller the ADC range the coarser the servo movement.

Cheers,
Mick
 

bfordfl

New Member
Calibrating Rudder Position

I'm interested in your project but I can't open the website. I'm not familiar with the "wink" extension. Can you give me any help in this matter? Do you have a photo of the finished board and the end application?

Bill
 

mickm2au

Member
Hi Bill

There's no website, that was just my attempt to add an icon to the post which failed.
I built the unit on strip board as there were not many components and jammed it in a small plastic "jiffy" box. I don't have any photo's, it was for a friend of mine so he has it. I don't think he's fitted it to his boat yet as he still has to make up the steering linkages.
Cheers,
Mick
 

Captain Haddock

Senior Member
Not picaxe related but I made a rudder position indicator that fitted entirely in the helm gear (cable operated morse type unit), it just consisted of 5 reed switches as found in burglar alarms on windows and 5 leds and a magnet glued to the gear, yellow in the centre, 2x reds to port and 2x greens to starboard, works well and saves a lot of cable running.
 
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