Hello Element 14!
Let me introduce my ongoing Raspberry Pi project: the Leviathan, a Raspberry Pi robot boat.
The robot hull is built from extruded polystyrene sheets by using hot-wire cutter and glue. The hull is covered with glass fibre and epoxy resin to add rigidity and to make the hull water-tight.
The boat is powered using 12V 20AH AGM battery to ensure long operating time. Once our software is ready, the boat should be able to execute long surveillance operations on a local lake. According our preliminary tests the Raspberry Pi should stay operational at least 8 hours. It is interesting to see how long distances we will be able to travel.
The electronics are enclosed in a small container in the boat. Raspberry Pi is used as brain, and it is powered by 10000mAh battery from Adafruit. Motors, servos and lights are controlled using Adafruit PWM driver. Navigation is achieved by GPS receiver and boat is controlled via mobile broadband dongle using a mobile web user interface.
The boat is now being tested and we are expecting to see cool pictures taken by the device in the near future: the boat is obviously equipped with Raspberry Pi camera. Here is one of the first images taken by the device:
If you find our project interesting, you can follow our progress in our blog: http://leviathan.godigi.fi/. Our next test drive session is planned for saturday 9th of August - stay tuned for updates!
