The Shipyard ( Dry Dock ): Builds & Questions > Yachts and Sail

Carina sailboat - my scratch build!

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roycv:
Hi Ramon, sorry about your health issues, some would have given up at that stage so more power to your elbow!  My remark was generated by such a beautiful looking model and one after my own heart left incomplete.  Glad that you are forging on but do it at a measured pace so that you get better as you progress.

One never knows when the great reaper in the sky might call, I shall be 80 this summer and I try to keep fit although the last few weeks I have failed to get out due to rain etc.

I am working on a Bella yacht in another thread which I shall be altering to suit some ideas I have and it needs some calculations as to where to adjust a new sail plan to.  I have done it before so when the arithmetic is right, I know it it will look rightl!
We have a nice sunny morning here but cold and I am going out on my bike for some excercise for my calf muscles.
In a week's time I am off on a month's holiday to see my son in Australia, full size sailing and a bit of cycling.
stay healthy.
kind regards Roy

Hellmut1956:
Health problems are continuing having reached a new maxima of my problems about 10 days ago. A strong cold caused my force in legs and arms to prevent me to issue any force. I am now recovering and the worry that if I do not fight my limitations I am in risk to get worse. Muscles and brain, both need to be exercised to keep and improve their performance.

Hellmut1956:
Now I have had my 4th stroke. Also with my diabetics I am now having to inject medicine. Move from diabetics type 2 to type 1! Messy is that often I am bordering, feeling a bit dizzy, to go upstairs ond try to sleep, as this helps! But I will not give up!





Here a picture that shows how I am working to define a new panel for my electronics workbench. I found this small displays that are able to monitor voltage and current and I want to have them displays the actual values for each of the 8 voltages my panel supplies!





This is a picture of my work in progress to make my 3. generation panel!










As you can appreciate my moving through the Internet gets me in touch with stuff that brings up crazy ideas to use the stuff I find! I will not bother you with the electronic details as this is a naval modelling site! But doing stuff this way keeps my mood high and my mental force high to work on stuff. My wife asks me why I am putting so much effort in my workshop! I know that all the stuff that cannot be sold will end up in a trash container, but should I sit in a corner and wait to die? NO! I do my activities as if I would live forever!

Hellmut1956:
Just coming back from a stay at the hospital for a week due to diabetes problems. This stay was use ful to read, was useful to reflect and to think about the possibilities to apply what I learned in those readings to my model. 2 "topics" did come out of this exercise. One was the possibility to create an Alexa speech interface with the electronics in my model. The other one was to investigate if artificial intelligence could be applied to my sheet control system.


Both of this activities do require to think about what, how and if meaningful it is to apply this.


So for the Alexa interface, voice interface, does require to think about where such an interface would look efficient or at least funny. So i.e. setting up the model at the shore of the pond or during the tests in my workshop. This does require quite a bit of work to analyze it.


The use of artificial intelligence as part of my sheet control system requires me to reflect what "inputs" would be valid and against which the AI would do the fine tuning of the sheet control system. Another 2 true inputs are the position of the control stick on the R/C transmitter that defines what is the maximum angle of opening the boom is allowed to have. The other valid input is the one coming from the magnetic angular sensor keeping track of the boom. This is the true actual angular position of the sail.


The use of AI requires to have a lot of information, called data sets or examples, to train the AI algorithmen. As my sheet control system uses a couple of electronic sensors, each of them can generate thousands or hundred of thousand data points as the sensors do provide data to the system at pretty high frequencies. It is relatively simple to generate those examples in my workshop, as a ventilator would imitate the wind and apply pressure to the sail. The challenges related to this concept are on one side related to identify the different possible or likely scenarios and as a consequence the type of actions a KI would have to do.


The other side is to think which method of AI offers the functionalities I want. One aspect is that the AI should continue to learn when rolled out. So I am planning to define and specify what I want the AI to do and what data points are available so to identify which methods of AI could be appropriate. With this I want to ask in AI related forums for support.

Hellmut1956:
Hi my friends.
It has some benefits that I am not progressing with building my sailboat due to health problems. reflecting things about the design of the sheet control system presented here made me aware of an aspect that could be addressed thanks to the intelligence of my sheet control system.





My sailboat model shown in the photo has beams on main and fock sail. I do plan to be able to fully open the sail, 90° to the hulls main axis, to fully benefit the wind coming from the rear. But this has a problem! The beams would touch the water surface when the hull gets away from the perpendicular position. So opening the sails up to 90°, as it is my objective, I do need to ensure the beams do not touch the water! So there is a maximum inclination degree were the beams touch the water surface.


So my sheet control system has to take this into account by having a sensor that keeps track of the inclination. The input from this sensor has to change the maximum allowed opening, which usually is managed by the position of the associated stick on the remote control, to ensure the beam s do not touch water!


As you can well imagine, the stepper motor used as winch has no problem with this duty, the computation in the microcontroller to monitor the inclination sensor, is also fast enough. But what is with the mechanical part of it? How fast is it possible to pull in the sheet to pull in the beams? Here experimenting will be key. But also intelligence might be able to include what is inclinating the hull and ensure a maximum pull speed is being taken care of. The cause can be either the operator deciding to change the direction the boat boat is navigating or a change in the direction of the relative wind angle is. In both cases the intelligence and the mechanics of my sheet control system can and has to ensure the inclination of the sailboat does not result in pulling in the sheet faster than the maximum speed to be defined.


Fortunately acceleration and angle sensors are cheap and extremely powerful thanks to their use in smartphones. 


I know, my sailboat model will, with a very high probability, never finish and sail before I die.

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