25 Apr 2017
Still completely unrelated to boats, but I needed somewhere to put this. Here is a
blow-by-blow guide to installing a minimal Ubuntu 16.10 to a ZFS
root, booted from EFI, which as used as a LXC host to act as an Apple "Time Machine"
destination.
14 Mar 2017
A completely generic script that will proxy serial devices over HTTP,
turning USB-things into internet-things.
25 Oct 2016
In which the author is fed up.
25 Oct 2016
In which the author is required to remedy five minutes of inattention a year ago by
spending several hours and a few hundred pounds on a moderately hazardous activity,
before
trying to reframe the whole event as some sort of achievement.
26 Aug 2016
On Wednesday 24th we finally got her in the water, two years and four months
after she arrived. Here, in high-def, fetishistic, shaky, niche appeal video glory
is the launch. Sped up because even I couldn't bear how slow it was.
Anyone reading this blog (yes sir, you at the back) would have expected this to go
pear-shaped at some point, and you wo...
08 Aug 2016
In which the author describes the ad-hoc manufacture of a small device with no
supporting calculations and parts sourced from an unknown supply chain, charging it
with
enough electrical power to start a good size fire and then walking away,
congratulating himself that he has come in under budget.
08 Jul 2016
Last Sunday we finally moved the boat out of the shed, it's home
for two years and three months. Of course this went smoothly. Ha. Trying
to lift a 14m long, 120kg mast 4 meters into the air is not as simple as it sounds
with three people. Worse, three hours after we had planned to leave we had half
the trailer jacked up, the axles loosened and were try...
26 May 2016
The setup of the Yamaha F9.9 engine - I replaced the Yamaha 703 control box with a
flush
mounted equivalent and some custom electronics, and linked the engine to the tiller
(and
a rudder angle sensor for good measure)
26 May 2016
This article is 500 words of rant, covering in excruciating detail the five computers
I destroyed or discarded before settling on a sixth that actually works - a Raspberry
Pi 3 with some UUGear hubs. Likely nothing of interest here unless you're
installing a low-power computer in a vehicle and need lots of USB devices.
20 Mar 2016
My F-33 is the narrow version; at 2.5m wide on the trailer, I can drive it without
a permit. But it also makes for a narrow cabin. The table fitted by Multihulls
Direct was way, way too wide for the boat, and was also glassed in as a perma...
29 Jan 2016
Power switching I've had this installed for about a year now and it's
working very well, so I'm finally prepared to go public - while there are a few
changes I would make, the system works. I've previously outlined the broad design
goals. This one will focus on the implementation. I wanted every circuit
to be switchable manually or from a computer, and to be able...
17 Dec 2015
The Galley seems a bit of a grand name for the first 600mm inside the companionway
hatch, but that's where the sink, hob and fridge are so it'll have to do. This
will be a bit of a work-in-progress article as I get time to update The
Sink I bought a sink from Aquafax and installed it. I almost
immediately regretted this - it used a lot of my preciou...
15 Dec 2015
The washboards from Multihulls Direct are made of 6mm Acrylic, and
slot into a 6mm groove fashioned into the companionway. The trouble is 6mm acrylic
has quite a bit of flex, and a good kick would easily dislodge them. So I made
some new ones. In order to fit the existing 6mm slot, I epoxied two sheets
of 5mm foam together with an offset around the edge. A layer...
28 Jul 2015
I think this is the simplest possible way to extend a wireless network if you have
a wired network
to build on.
10 Jul 2015
The mast has a lot going on at the top and I didn't want to start peppering
it with holes to mount the various bits of hardware that are going up there, so
I got a plate lasercut out of 6mm Aluminium - now I have discovered laser cutting,
I'm finding new uses for it everywhere I look. With the plate safely
on my workbench I could then trial fit, align (critical ...
10 Jul 2015
I installed a Garmin AIS 600 AIS transceiver, although as my VHF receives
AIS too I'll only power this one up when I want to transmit. Installation requires
a Windows machine, which annoyed me as I dont have one. I fired up a virtual machine
and put a sniffer on the serial port to log the conversation - the AIS600 uses
a standard FT232R USB UART with a USB id of 0403:6001, ...
06 Jul 2015
There has been so much going on over the last few months that updating this
has been a chore I've postponed. However I've been chatting to a few other F-boat
folk recently and have been startled to learn that people are reading this drivel
and, worse, getting ideas from it. I can't stress enough that the purpose
of this blog is not to educate, but to serve as a warning t...
05 Jul 2015
Design Overview I gather there are two approaches to boat electrics,
minimal and complex. It's fair to say I've gone for complex. I had several goals at
the start of this project. I want to be able to get as much data
as possible in an open format and crunch it. At the time that meant NMEA0183,
as the protocol was easy to work with (and extend) with relatively ...
31 Mar 2015
This article is turning into a bit of a long story. It was originally published
on 31st March 2015, but there are lots of updates since then. Check the bottom for
new content. Latest update is 7th September 2015 Part of the fun here
is playing with new technologies, which includes Lithium Batteries. As any fule
know those are the ones that explode, are horrendously expe...
31 Jan 2015
The ATmega32U4 chip (which underlies the Teensy 2.0, the Arduino Leonardo
and Arduino Micro) has a USB serial port and a single hardware USART. If you want
to use any one of the 40-odd other pins for serial communications, you have two
choices: First, SoftwareSerial, which allows any port to be used but
uses the delay method to control timing - essentially your CPU i...
17 Oct 2014
I have lights! A good thing too because it's suddenly very dark outside,
and worse inside the boat. I've been tinkering with this one for a while and
I'm pleased enough with the latest design to go public with them. Here's what I've
got: 1 x strip of 5050 warm-white LEDs from eBay - go for the "300
leds/m" variety, you want as many as possible. A 5m st...
22 Sep 2014
We finally fitted the floats over the weekend - I have a whole boat,
rather than three parts! The process was relatively easy - I'd built a couple
of trolleys from timber to wheel them out and hoist them into place, which meant
we could do the whole thing with four people. After hoisting into place
and making sure they fitted, I mixed up about 16 pumps (~ 360ml...
18 Aug 2014
I've been working on lots of sub-projects at once, most of which are
still semi-incomplete. However one which is now complete is the bow-pole (or the
"boats nose" according to my 2yo daughter), so I thought I'd document that.
Hardware The pole as delivered by Multihulls Direct didn't need much, just
two U-bolts for the Screecher and Spinnaker attach...
28 May 2014
For high load items on the deck like cleats, winches etc. you really
need backing plates to put your bolts through. I've decided to drill and tap aluminium
plates where I can, partly because it looks nicer and partly because the lower
profile and rounded edges of a finished plate are kinder to your head when it
gets rough, or when you've nipped below to mix your eighth G...
23 Apr 2014
It's here! Finally after far too long waiting the boat turned up Easter
Sunday. Typically the container unload seems to be done at a port or boat yard
- certainly that's how the photos of the other F-33 unloadings I've seen did it. I
decided not to do this, mainly because the option of unloading and winching the boat
into the air by hand at my build site seemed a better o...
01 Apr 2014
Materials and metrics cheat-sheet This is partial and growing list of equivalents
for the various US-centric weights, measures and materials that I've found referred
to when trying to source materials for the build - primarily for my reference.
Electrical Wiring Cross sectionNearest AWGAmps at 60°Crimp connector 0.75mm²19,
186Red 1mm²178Red or Blue 1.5mm²16, 1512Blue 2.5mm²14, 1...
10 Feb 2014
Here are the latest build photos from Multihulls Direct in the Philippines -
it's done, and ready for shipping
03 Jan 2014
Experiments with the Atmel AVR ATTiny841
26 Sep 2013
A quick perl script to dump the state of the GPIO pins on a Beaglebone Black.
27 Aug 2013
A circuit to integrate LittleBits with your computer via USB
16 Aug 2013
Some quick notes to document how I turned a Raspberry Pi into a wireless router with
a wired network,
bluetooth-tethered iPhone or Huawei E3131 dongle providing the gateway.
15 Aug 2013
Here are the latest build photos from Multihulls Direct in the Philippines -
interior nearly complete
17 May 2013
Here are the latest build photos from Multihulls Direct in the Philippines
06 May 2013
Here are the latest build photos from Multihulls Direct in the Philippines
15 Apr 2013
Hand-soldering SMD boards A quick note on how I'm doing this. SMT parts are
pretty daunting to solder although there are plenty of people on the net that will
tell you it's way easier than through-hole. After a dozen or so of these I think
the truth is somewhere in between. The image on the right has rollovers showing
my setup - I made quite a few false starts but now I'm getting pre...
15 Apr 2013
Here's the first build photo from Multihulls Direct in the Philippines - start
with the floats
25 May 2012
I have a Teensy 2.0 and some ATtiny45 and ATtiny85 chips from Atmel, which
I want to program with a minimum of fuss and parts. For me this means using the Teensy
as an "In System Programmer" or ISP, and there are plenty of other articles on how
to do this. But I thought I'd file what I've got here for reference anyway. It's
very easy - no hardware required except a Teensy, the ATTiny...
06 May 2012
This is my TV. I hate cables, so when I was planning this I routed all the cables
I'd ever need behind the wall. HDMI, TV Aerial, speaker, ethernet, and a power socket.
I forgot to route USB. If I want to use an Atmolight this is
a problem. Lights behind the TV that change color require a cable to the computer.
They also require a power supply and, apparently, quite an ex...
31 Jan 2012
Notes on integrating a BTM400-6B Bluetooth module from ebay, with a Teensy 2.0.
The bluetooth module is currently USD$7. Here's what I did: Soldered
the Bluetooth module to the breakout board supplied by the vendor. This breaks out
GND, 5V, Tx, Rx, PIO8/State (wired to a status led on the board) and PIO11/Key - when
this is high the board is in "command mode", when it's low it...
