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Author Topic: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!  (Read 18788 times)

Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #25 on: April 16, 2015, 11:10:27 pm »

Dear John


Please, do not see me as stubborn only! I have a clear objective for doing naval modelism! The objective is to use this project as a red line to engage with the technologies I meet on this route! I have never been a skipper myself! I never plan to be a skipper either! To tell you the truth! I have had a valid pilot license and i have flown as pilot in command all kind of single engine land planes, bet it at daytime, or be it at night! I have flown with the goal to acquire the permit to ly multi engine planes!


I would never make I license and go on a sailboat as a skipper myself! An accident on a plane kills you fast and the probability is high I will not suffer. In a boat, the chances to dye by drowning are real! No way!


So I love doing the work to build my model working with wood, working with metall, working with glass and carbon fibre, I deal with learning to use my lathe and my milling machine. I love learning and applying electronics to make thinks possible which are either expensive or impossible and since about a year and a half I love pursuing the objective of applying the design by modeling method. Those activities are my reason for why I do what I do!


Nothing related to modeling my sheet control system has anything to do with the skills of sailing itself! What you are writing is absolutely correct if my goal would be to become a proficient skipper of a model sailboat! This is very, very low in my priorities! I enjoy it when meeting with other naval modelists and they allow me to navigate their sail boat models! But to tell you the truth, its fun for a couple of hours during a day spend with friends. But it is nothing that would keep me fascinated enough to endure the perseverance that naval modeling requires!


Reading through the report you might guess the diverse activities i have pursued so far and that I have included in my report from scratch! Since about 2 years I have been discussing and investigating the issues related to implement a pulley as it is shown from the Endeavour. During this time some of my highly respected readers from whom I learn a lot and I hope I am also able to give back a bit have argued like you did. Some, and I make clear I do not list you under those, have even been so alienated by my way to pursue my goals that they could apparently not find another way for themselves but to attack me personally! I repeat, I do not list you as one of those! Some real experts in sailing of which you I am certain are one, have even expressed good arguments why a pulley that works and has its justification on a sailboat like the Endeavour about one hundred years ago and is 20 times larger then my model, does not work on a model due to scale issues!


So my modeling approach is a scientific way that uses the most advanced technologies and methods to model the pulley and to reflect the influence of a huge number of parameters on the ability or disability of the pulley as planned to work on my model. Those studies related to this effort have proven to be for me, I want to emphasize, for me, like opening a door to a whole set of new worlds! It starts with just the electronics.


Be it the knowledge of building circuits I do design myself, be it to investigate in depth about what is in the operation of a stepper motor. Experiments I have published in Youtube, videos published there from Trinamic for example about the functionalities of their control ICs and modules represent a whole world of possibilities that do add to my efforts in making this pulley implementation a reality.


Be it just the learning of the mathematics! I discovered for myself the offering from German universities of lectures and full self paced courses. I discovered the OpenCourseware offering from MIT in Boston. I decided and engaged into updating my eroded knowledge in mathematics by studying the courses of calculus, Single Variable and Multivariable. I learned about the role of logic in mathematical proofs. Studying this I learned about "modal logic" which is different from the "normal logic" applied to mathematical proofs. I learned and am learning about algebraic structures in mathematics versus the stringent and strict formal approach. I started to get the feeling that all those areas of mathematics i will engage with and which are usually covered as the bachelor degree in mathematics are really nothing more then elementary techniques teached to really learn to do mathematics.


I am learning about modeling, simulation and verification, I am learning about causal objects and acausal components, I am learning about complex dynamic systems and their methodology. I am learning that the modeling and simulation language Modelica and its tools actually apply that methodology coming from the finance science at MIT Sloan Institute in the mid fifties.


And even in physics, I have discovered the existence of 3 different ways to deal with physics in general and mechanics in special as it applies to my objective to model and simulate my sheet control system.


One method is the most general used on in teaching physics at school and university. It follows more or less the historical development of physics.


The other method approaches physics using the mathematical construct of topological manifolds. Very interesting, as it uses the properties of different kind of topological manifolds to teach the same topics of physics.


And recently I have discovered the system physics that applies the methods from the complex dynamic systems to physics, uses those methods coming from complex dynamic systems to model, simulated and verify the understanding of physics. Why should I close myself to this for me fascinating way to do naval modelism?
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JayDee

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #26 on: April 17, 2015, 12:10:13 am »

Hello Helmut,

I am thinking.
A reply will follow !!.

John,  :-))
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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #27 on: April 17, 2015, 09:55:37 am »

Hello Helmut,

I have tried to come up with an answer that would not look like an attack.
None are available.
On this subject we are opposites.

You do your things and I will do mine.
I am withdrawing from any further discussions.

John.
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #28 on: April 17, 2015, 10:40:05 am »

Absolutely valid and deserves my maximum respect!
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #29 on: August 25, 2015, 08:04:31 pm »

Just to give a sign of life. Serious health problems have impacted my efforts as described above leading to a dramatic slow down in advancing my studies.So I am applying the stubbornness and perseverance that characterizes us naval modelist to keep the effort of learning and studying and so hopefully to overcome the limitations resulting from my health problems.


One thing I have been doing was taking advantage of the fact that I have many areas in which I have activities to do, selecting the ones that I felt able to and switching between those. So I have advanced the work on my workbench, still a lot to do. I have continued my efforts in electronics and in that context studying Linux, mathematica from Wolfram Software and playing with Raspberry Pi.


So til soon, have a good day!
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #30 on: May 15, 2017, 11:30:03 am »

Just last week I had my third stroke and now 2 arteria blocked. Fortunately they both have an alternative route for the blood to feed my brains cells! I am still alive and working on my project, while the focus did change. I was experimenting and learning to use RaspBerry Pi's on one side to advance the efforts to verify models created for parts of my sheet control system. On the other side I am considering to use the powerful boards that include the ability ro run a Linux os and to be accesible via WiFi! Via the Internet and the WiFi links between my PC running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bits and the Raspis running Raspian os, a Linux version available for Raspis! My PC was rendered inoperable by somebody who used the Link to overcome my well protected and current os defenses. Updating to Windows 10 Pro, as I has nothing to lose, my PC became fully operational again.


So I started to study in more depth Linux and topics around reducing the vulnerability of my labs setup! Here a picture from my labs informatics structure:





As you can appreciate from studying the above picture, I am sitting next to my PC which connects via WiFi to my Internet modem and by the same means to the Raspi boards which the access the Arduino or LPCXpresso kind of boards. Those are boards which are not able to run Linux. You can see, that while working in my lab I do use WiFi to communicate to what will be hardware electronics within my model. But the same means allow to access the Carina sailboat model from the shore of a lake.


What is amazing is, that the hype of IoT and IIoT, are pushing technologies and contractual means that would allow to have access not only via WiFi, but also via celular phone kind of communication. Even the trend in the market to make development environments available for free and so called "Maker" hardware boards for a very low price do push the envelop of what my approach could do. Just to give you an example: My provider for my celular does charge just 1 Euro per month for 100 MByte of data transmission and makes it possible to increase the data volume even for a single day!


So I am studying security technologies and having the benefit that companies are heavily investing in making devices connected to the Internet safer! As there is a whole range of technologies involved in implementing secure functionality and as it is still not a mature technology in the embedded market, opposed to the server market, I am not just challenged to learn to understand all those technologies but also to get a full 20.000 miles view of how I can combine those technologies. As always many rodas get you to Rome, I do not find out yet, which road the technology is going to take. Additionally updates and new features are coming nearly on a weekly bases. But I am seeing that my guesses are being pretty accurate. Depending on my health I will publish update to this report and include many pictures and fotos!
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xrad

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #31 on: October 02, 2017, 09:48:31 pm »

any thought to using stepper motor and screw rod, speed could be adjusted by thread pitch or stepper RPMs, and easy to program endpoints/position/speed like this example(less pulleys, less tangles):
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #32 on: January 27, 2018, 01:25:47 pm »

Sorry for responding so late. Health continues to be a major issue for me! Here you find my tutorial about stepper motors that should serve as a source for information and I am more then just willing to respond to any question.


There are a few things that make the difference between stepper motors and dc motors:


Stepper motors do steps and the speed is defined by how many steps per second the stepper motor can do! DC motors you use the rpm to define its speed.


Keeping in mind the just written information:


Stepper motors have their strongest torque when holding their position and the available torque gets lower the faster its makes steps. Following from this stepper motors are good when rotation speed is relatively low!


Stepper with lower nominal voltage are better than those with higher voltage when they have the same torque capabilities.


Control of stepper motors love high voltage. They require circuitry to limit the current to the maximum value defined for the motor.


Just to give you an example when I started to investigate the operation of stepper motors. I used a board with the famous L297 and L298 electronic components and fed the stepper with 12 VDC. It did never work! I found later using the "steprocker" board from Trinamic that my stepper motor would never work with that voltage when only so called full steps or a minimum value of microsteps. The stepper motor worked perfectly with that voltage when I set more microsteps.


Now to the question about a way to have a simple path to use stepper motors and control the via your RC system. RC receiver generate for each of its channels a signal that is called PWM, or pulse with modulation:





Servos require a frequency of 50 Hz or a cycle length of 20 ms. This means one cycle is 20 ms long. In this picture you see the image of 4 cycles or a time length of 80 ms! 50 times 20 ms gives you 1 second or 1 Hz!


The picture helps to explain the term "Duty Cycle". As you can see on the graph for 20% duty cycle it means that during 20% of the 20 ms of 1 cycle the signal has a voltage level of i.e. 5 VDC or 4 ms! In the graph below the duty cycle is 60% or 12 ms out of the total 20 ms and this is repeated 50 times per second! So when you pull the stick of you RC transmitter to its lower limit the PWM might have a length of 5% and when you push it to its upper limit 90% duty cycle. A servo electronic defines to which position it has to go by influence of the PWM duty cycle! The number of meaningful positions you can put the sticks of you RC transmitter is relatively limited and depending on your skill level controlling your RC transmitter. Lets assume you can set 50 different positions of the control stick.


Traditionally the circuit in the servo was made using analog technology which basically means it averages the voltage level the PWM gives to a value between 0 VDC for full pull or 0% duty cycle and 5 VDC for 100% duty cycle. Digital servos already do themselves what you have to accomplish by the use of electronics in any case! You use a "clock" a functionality within a microcontroller that "ticks". A controller that operates at 1 MHz, ticks 1024 * 1024 times a second. If you take the analogy from your PC specs it will operate at lets say 1 GHz. A clock operating at 1 GHz ticks 1024 * 1024 * 1024 times per second.


So what the digital electronic that operates with a traditional RC receiver is that it starts the a counter at the rising edge of the PWM. That is the moment in time the 20 ms cycle begins, see the vertical line in the lower graph. When it detects the falling edge it stops the counter. It compares the value of the counter with the value stored in a variable that gives the value of a counter that clicks of the full 20 ms. This way it determines the duty cycle of the PWM in the signal line of your receiver channel.


Now, comparable with the result of the analog circuit servo determines the angle position of the server arm!


A stepper motor does steps. The step position when I fully pull the stick of my RC transmitter is position "0" and the step position when I full push the stick of my transmitter forward is the position i.e. 1000. To be precise 999 as the first position is "0" and not "1"! So when my computed duty cycle length is 20 % my stepper motor has to move to the step position "200"! There are numerous example in the internet how a cheap Arduino board can be programmed to do this for all channels of a RC receiver.


Knowing that my stepper motor has to move to the position "200" is what a stepper controller has to be told to do. Just to reinforce. The position of a stick in a RC transmitter is usually in its center position. This would be applied to our example the position "500" or 50% duty cycle!


A final advice! operating a stepper motor at its nominal voltage level will usually result in very poor torque and very low speeds if it moves at all! I see many examples in the Internet where servos are operated that have i.e. a nominal voltage of 12 VDC with 12 VDC. The result is that the stepper motor either does not step at all or it has such a bad torque that as soon as it has to rotate a load stops stepping! In my sail boat where I use a stepper motor as winch is has a nominal voltage of around 2.5 VDC and I do operate it with a battery pack of 12 LiFePO4 batteries connected in series resulting in voltage between around 40 VDC, battery pack full and 24 VDC, battery pack empty! So I am using voltage level between 10 times and 16 times above the nominal value. The stepper motor controller ensures that never more than the allowed 3 A are flowing through the stepper motor coils! By the way the controller circuit does this by supplying the voltage to the stepper motor using a PWM circuitry to ensure that not more than the 3 A flow to the stepper motor.
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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #33 on: February 03, 2018, 07:08:54 am »

Hello all, I this thread has not died!  How is the sailboat now?
regards Roy
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #34 on: February 03, 2018, 10:47:34 am »

Hi roycv. As I wrote, health is slowing down my abilities to work on my projects related to the Carina project. Also my work on the workshop is progressing, but far too slow for my taste! My activities that would impact to advance on the mechanical work on my model require to get my workshop to where it is possible to fix the problem with my milling machine. The mechanical work there pending are mainly 2. One is to get the compartments for the batteries done. This can only be made with my milling machine, as I have to work on 10 mm aluminium plates. The second part that I have to work on have to do with advancing the work on the sheet control system. This requires to proceed with the making of the 2 drums. Also here the need for the milling machine is a requirement. The drums diameter is to big to be processed om my lathe.


Related to the control electronics part of the sheet control system I need to have my electronic lab section of my workshop. As I have written I had to stop my work on the experiments related to the electronics as my PC was rendered inoperable due to attacks from the Internet. I have presented my concept of how I plan to fix this problem. This task also has a mechanical part and one where mechanical work on one side are due, electronics and informatics make up the second part.


As I have written earlier, my project of the Carina has developed in the direction that the path to completion is my main objective. Due to the aggravating health problems, 3 stokes and a few times having had my hart stop beating for a while and now also extrem being tired that the reduces not only the number of hours I can spend on the project but also my abilities to be able to concentrate enough to do the required and for me fascinating studies. So wishing to advance all this activities is what gives me the momentum to fight the limitations I am suffering from my health problems. A good way to get up to speed to have the ability to advance on my studies is to write in forums like this one.


So if you have specific questions, i.e. related to use a stepper motor in your projects, go and place them. I am very interested to help!


Right now my activities are focused on getting my mechanical workbenches done, as this would enable me to work on fixing my milling machine. In the studies I am restarting to work with Docker to have isolated domains to do my software development studies, part of my efforts to protect myself against attacks from the Internet and, not less important, to protect my PC from getting inoperable or unstable due to my programming activities. Finally, by law in Bavaria, my landlord had to place smoke alarms in our house. I have found in the Internet a solution that works with ESP8266 boards and a microphone. ESP8266 and the more recent ESP32 have the specially supported functionality for wireless communication and the ability to communicate with the Internet. So placing a small ESP32 board with its microphone board, less then 7 Euros next to each smoke alarm and placing 2 ESP32-WROOM boards that include a small OLED display for 2 control units makes my smoke alarms interconnected so that we can hear an alarm originated in the workshop in the cellar in the room below the rook and viceversa. And even this technology offers interesting possibilities to be used in my model Carina.
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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #35 on: February 04, 2018, 09:58:02 am »

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
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #36 on: March 31, 2018, 02:48:24 pm »

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.
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #37 on: September 16, 2018, 02:15:17 pm »

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!
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #38 on: December 14, 2018, 02:50:07 pm »

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.
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Hellmut1956

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Re: Carina sailboat - my scratch build!
« Reply #39 on: July 30, 2019, 02:16:16 pm »

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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