jtryon

the other thing that i had trouble with was the rotary encoder, and jon said that he had problems with them as well. are you using the encoder? if not, i'd second what jhartt said--check power connections to the arduino, or change the speed setting to see if that helps. if you are on a river maybe you need to lower the deploy speed to account for the river current.

good idea on the permanent cable 🤘

1988 Supra Sunsport. not looking to do much else this summer other than surf! i do get annoyed every spring at having to adjust my shaft packing though, so the Glide system would be an awesome addition.

success!! i switched the tx and rx pins on the GPS and it's working immediately! i get 7-8 satellites even indoors, and shows a speed of just above zero while not moving, but that's good because it's a readout. for anyone using @jonthompson code, the wiring sheet should say RX-->D9, TX-->D8 rather than the other way around. hope that helps someone.

i'm on my second GPS (same one jon used this time) and can't get it to talk to the arduino. it does have a solid light indoors which indicates no satellites, and a blinking light every second when outdoors which indicates a satellite fix. it still shows "sats=0" in the serial monitor though. i've switched the TX/RX pins with no change. let me know if you have success with another GPS!

anyone know how the surf band that @jonthompson added to his should be wired to the arduino board?

'88 Supra Sunsport

great, thank you jon!

@jonthompson what is the pinout for the surf band receiver to the arduino?

edit: never mind, i think i figured it out

i only have it because the first iteration of this project was 2 years ago and that's what the guy i got the code at that time from said to get haha I'm still going to use the relay's--i already bought those. thanks again Jon!

super helpful, thanks! here are the specs on the motor driver: https://www.pololu.com/product/2507 it shows that it operates from 5.5v to 24v, but no mention of if it has a 5v regulator onboard.

I know this stuff is all relatively cheap and all, but I have a different Arduino (Mega 2560) and Motor Board than you guys are using, so the pins are also labeled differently. Should I just bite the bullet and buy what you guys are using, or do you think my stuff will work with this project? Here are pictures:

that's awesome!