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Hello, still alive! Still in a house-move limbo, and had no workshop access since around September/October. Hopefully moving soon, and looking forward to making videos again 😅 

Finally gotten around to a post-mortem on the water ingress with Casper. Looks like the Vaseline I used to grease the shaft is totally melted away, the bearing on the wet side is rusted and so is the universal joint from the motor.

Not shocked we had issues now! 

I’m making a start on hull redesigns for prototype 2 of the boat project! 

Had some great feedback about compartmentalising the different systems of the boat, and I’ve been thinking over a way to separate out the motors.

The drawn diagrams are of a cylindrical motor housing that contains a brushless motor, which is installed from the front and sealed in with an o-ring seal. The compartment itself is to be filled with mineral oil, though I’m wondering whether it would be possible to use seawater to handle lubricating bearings etc. 

Either way, this housing would be duplicated and then installed into the frame of the hull before fibreglassing the entire hull.

It’s hard to describe without a 3D model that’s for sure 😅

In other news, I’m planning to take out the motors of Casper, and convert them to be external thruster “pods”. The idea is to stop water ingress up the prop shaft by there not being a prop shaft! Then, I’m thinking of adding a couple of foam pontoons to give some horizontal space to setup some solar panels, and see how long we can do an endurance test for. 

I’m also in the process of purchasing a new house and moving, which is going to be a whole big thing in itself! Lots of DIY and renovation work are coming up, which I’m planning to show as a series of Shorts here. There is planned to be some electronics involved, such as automated lighting up the stairs. It’s a lot of redecoration, fixing issues and a complete workshop build from the ground up. 

my next video is now available in early access to Patreon subscribers! Will be available to everyone soon

 https://www.patreon.com/akamatchstic 

I’m working on a project again 👀 

After SO MANY DELAYS I have the hull of the first prototype autonomous boat printed 😅

Still need to epoxy the parts together, and reinforce the joints with steel plates. Then, the entire surface will have a coat of epoxy to provide waterproofing, followed up by a good coat of marine paint for aesthetics.

The next version is definitely going to be fibreglass around a wooden construction. This took far took long and needs so much work to get ready for any kind of voyage! 

It turns out that 3D printing an RC boat is not the best of ideas.

About 2-3 months ago, I finalised the prototype hull design for my first RC boat. The goal is literally to prove that I can build something that floats! 

As you can see from the photos… that’s not even finished printing yet.

For the last month or two, I’ve been seriously struggling with getting good parts out of my printer. To help with that, I designed and built my own enclosure (build video coming soon!), and switched over to using ABS+ to help with bed adhesion. Combined with getting my Z height sorted out and some much needed maintenance, I’ve finally been getting some good prints again 😅

Moral of the story: make sure to read up on best practices for 3D printing, and don’t just eyeball it!

The next boat prototype is 100% going to be fibreglass-based, considering the:

- print times 
- need to reinforce joints between pieces
- epoxy job to waterproof the hull 

Been a little absent lately, and done some DIY in the garden this past month! 

Looking to get back into my projects again next month 

It’s been a couple of months now since my last proper upload. I have good news: the next episode of the drone series is being edited now! 

I can’t wait to show you the progress I’ve made 😅 

Stanley update!

We are officially in the home stretch of this drone project of mine. I’ve written the code necessary to track a person, and also built a testing suite via SITL to debug it - can’t have Stanley trying to crash into me!

Here’s what’s left:

- Fix a bug where yaw direction oscillates when tracking a person
- Get a stable tune on Stanley’s PID controllers
- Further sanity checks via my testing suite
- Write the script for, and record, video covering:
    - the OAK-D Lite, 
    - SITL and my testing setup, 
    - how my code works 
- Run my code and see what happens in a proper test flight 

I’m also doing a LOT of stuff IRL too which means progress is a little slower than anticipated. 

I also started some of the editing process for footage I already have, and I’m SUPER pleased how it’s coming together so far!

Still can’t believe how far this channel has come along in the past year. Thank you for joining me on this ride 😅