Autopilot from scratch

[olaf hart]

Pretty basic question, but here goes.
Fooling around with a Raymarine Type 1 linear drive and a wheelpilot controller and computer.
Want to try using a simple H to drive the linear drive.
Is the drive voltage from Raymarine to the wheel motor 5 v or 12v?
Just trying to decide if I use the standard simple H or need to use the HV version.

[sailorxyz]

Originally Posted by olaf hart

Pretty basic question, but here goes.
Fooling around with a Raymarine Type 1 linear drive and a wheelpilot controller and computer.
Want to try using a simple H to drive the linear drive.
Is the drive voltage from Raymarine to the wheel motor 5 v or 12v?
Just trying to decide if I use the standard simple H or need to use the HV version.

The drive voltage is 12 or 24 volts depending on your house system voltage.

[Bill O]

As promised we wrote up an article about building a Pypilot system for our below deck hydraulic AP. The Pypilot can also be used to control steering with a tiller, wheel or wind vane. It works great and with very little power consumption.

Here's the link to the pypilot article Phoenix's Flight: Pypilot Open-Source Marine Autopilot for Hydraulic Steering

Also if you need to over haul your out chartplotter/nav. computer, here is the link to setting up a new Raspberry Pi based sytem that interfaces the AP and other peripherals. Phoenix's Flight: Building a Marine Navigational Computer with OpenCPN and Raspberry Pi3


Bill O.

[MartinR]

I can both recommend the CPT autopilot, which is a solid piece of gear and Seans Pypilot electronics, which are cheap and work perfectly.

Ideally, you would find a used CPT motor and use Seans motor controller and tinypilot.

It is also easy to build the drive unit yourself, a windshield wiper motor works. Preferably a 24V motor to run on 12V.