Dumbo the Autonomous Boat

Dumbo is an autonomous research vessel constructed by students at Cal Maritime.  Dumbo carries temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen sensors and makes oceanographic observations in the waters off of the Cal Maritime Campus.  This work has been supported by the CSU Council on Ocean Affairs, Science & Technology (COAST).

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NMEA 0183 Speedometer

I had an email request to find this project from 2010… I updated the code too!

Arduino in Test Mode
Arduino in Test Mode

This project  takes the pulse from a paddlewheel boat speed sensor and makes an NMEA output on the serial port.  It should work with most through-hull speed transducers, and also with windspeed transducers too.  The NMEA stream comes from the arduino serial port, so if you have a USB arduino you can hook it up to a laptop easily.  If you want to hook it up to another NMEA instrument you’ll need something like a MAX232 chip to take the TTL logic from the serial port pins and convert them to RS-232 (or convert to RS-422 to meet the NMEA specification).

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