Electronics

The electronics aspect of the project is concerned with data collection and processing. The performance or the boat is to be measured electronically to assist with the testing and development. The budget limit is set at £150.

A 3 8-bit sensor wireless data link has been proposed. This would be used to monitor the performance of the boat on the shore using a laptop. An display could be provided on both the transmitter and receiver module to provide real-time values for the boat crew and shore team, enabling the system to be used without a laptop and data collection.
An alternative would be to log data to onboard ram for retrieval onshore. However this prevents the data being available immediately and limits the time for which data collection can be performed.

The sensors will be designed to be swappable so that although only 3 sensors can be used at once, it will be possible to measure more than three quantities by changing the sensors. Quantities to be measured will include, boat speed, wind direction (apparent wind), height above water, and various forces acting on the boat/foils (via strain gauges).

The transmitter module for the boat will need to be waterproofed to survive spray, rain and the inevitable capsizes.

The transmitter* and receiver will be based on microcontrollers, a possible architecture is shown below:

Transmitter

Receiver

The onboard RS232 on the microcontroller will be used to provide an input to the serial port of a PC.

Transmitters/Receivers - www.radiometrix.co.uk