jtryon

never had a single problem with mine warping.  keep in mind these are in the water, so if there was some sort of temperature threshold that they start warping, you'll never reach it because of the lake water keeping them cool.  that being said, they never even feel warm when running off a hose in the driveway either.

question for everyone: i just got a 2007 centurion with sideswipe exhaust and want to convert back to this style.  FAE offers a complete kit for $880 which includes 4 elbows (2 x 3.5”/ 2 x 4.0”)and 2 cover plates and a one-piece Y FAE, through hull, no external bracing.  their kit re-uses the stock sideswipe hoses, so essentially the engine bay parts they supply are just two thru-hulls and two elbows for each side.  i'd like to keep it inexpensive and just do my own FAE with the same schedule 40 black PVC, but am wondering how that will fare internally in the engine compartment since it won't be cooled naturally like the external piping.  sched 40 is rated for 140 degrees.  water running through the engine comes in at a max lake/river temp of 90 degrees mid-summer (let's say), and exits out the exhaust within a few seconds.  if i have a 170 degree thermostat, what temp would you say the water coming out of the engine is at the most?  is the heat of a v-drive engine bay as much of a potential issue for a couple PVC elbows as the water running through the elbows?

11 minutes ago, jonthompson said:

just a heads up, ontop of a broken finger i was in a bike accident right after posting on thurs and am still recovering.. clearly not my summer - concussion and bumps and bruises and maybe a broken hand, tbd still.  i will post the code this week, just got slowed down on cleaning up and commenting it further.  if anyone already got the new romeo ble controller, hold off, the old code isnt compatible with that one.

yikes sorry to hear!

15 hours ago, Wyoming Malibu said:

First off this is an awesome thread and you guys have done a great job.  I have my controller and actuators wired in but I'm having some problems.  I can turn my switch to the left and it deploys to the left correctly.  Then back to the middle and it retracts correctly.  Then when I turn the switch to the right it will deploy right, deploy left and retract right.  It does this repeatedly.  I believe it did the opposite sequence when I deployed right for the first time after startup.  The print out shows surf side: right.  When I turn the switch back to the center it retracts both sides.  Any idea where I may have messed up?

I did have a few bumps when I started because I wired things up per Jharts wiring diagram and then realized I had to rewire to match jthompson code.  I have double checked the wiring per the jthompson wiring diagram and downloaded fresh code.  I have the default times set to 5900 and the min speed set to -1.  I couldn't get it to work by just removing the // at the end of the code on the //speed limit=1.

I'm using jthompsons code and I bought all the parts jhart specked out. 

do you have the rotary encoder connected?  remove that and see if it works better...i had problems with the encoder that i used in the beginning.

friggin' awesome jon 🤘

that touch screen would be fantastic, keep us posted!

@tylerstrop I would love an LCD add-on personally. I like the ability to tweak from an app too, but being able to see speed, GPS lock, deploy side and errors in real time would be awesome. Even better if your guys can program a button to switch from manual mode to GPS mode on the fly for testing.

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. 

On 6/8/2019 at 11:28 AM, RLCurl said:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IFG9FDO?ref=ppx_pt2_tab_b_prod_image  6” usb cable

good idea on the permanent cable 🤘

On 5/29/2019 at 8:28 AM, jtryon said:

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!

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.

7 hours ago, RLCurl said:

I haven't been able to see this trigger in the serial monitor yet, im waiting on a new GPS arriving Thursday. Everything else seams to be working fine when opting out the speed //. But when i test it moving, i have been having an issue with the GPS. When i resolve that, I will update on the band.

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?

great, thank you jon!

On 7/19/2018 at 11:32 AM, jonthompson said:

Just a heads up - I added a simple cheap DIY surf band to my controller over the weekend and just checked in the code to my github  The added parts are under $20:

@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!

10a fuses should be fine right? I contacted Lenco before doing mine and they said the motors only draw 7-8amps under load, 2.5-3 with no load.

On 5/28/2018 at 10:50 PM, jonthompson said:

Glad you got the kinks worked out!  Just a heads up - after a bunch of work on this - and a few boats running it - i found the best was a rotary encoder for fine tuning.  I had a fancy screen and wifi controls and it was a huge pain in the ass to do while on the water.  The dial works great, you do it in real time - and has a click button to save deploy state to eeprom on the arduino when you dial it in so your state is saved and ready to go the next time you hit surf speeds.  I'll upload that code to my repo this weekend if you wanna grab it, i just installed it on a friends boat today and it's working great!

is the current code on github updated for the rotary encoder?  awesome work guys....i'm an IT geek by trade but have never gotten into this level of coding so i'm amazed at what you're doing!

Awesome!

Is that the latest transfer code or regular code?

Here is a couple of the surf flap to knock down spray

To attach them I used PVC cement, but found that the down pipe turned outward a little bit after a few times out. To fix that I drilled a pilot hole in a couple places on the down pipe and screwed in a couple short stainless screws. I did the same with all of the other joints to keep it from coming apart at all. Here’s some pics:

i noticed a little bit of spray above surf speeds so i built a surf flap to knock that down (google "duffy surf flap" for the original idea).  it actually cleaned up the surf wave as well.  it's a horse stall mat that you can get at tractor supply company and cut to fit your boat.