A Wonderful Opensource Controller, for TOUV and more!

 

 

After building and testing the Tiny Opensource Underwater Vehicle (TOUV) one of the first real life opportunities to show it off was the excellent Liverpool Makefest. Held on July 5th this was the 8^th Makefest, but due to Covid, was celebrating 10 years of Makefest. It, as ever, was an excellent day. If you have no clue what I am on about, TOUV is available on a repo here, there is a video of it in underwater action on this post, and there's an article about it in the current issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.

Back to Makefest, as a solo maker it’s hard to get around these events but close to my stand of rockets, robots, and of course, submarines, was the excellent DoEsLiverpool stand. In turn on that stand were the fabulous Chris Huffee and Snoof Kakkekop from Steam Engineers. Steam Engineers work tirelessly to make making and learning fun and accessible with a focus and specialism in working with neuro divergent young people. Chris and Snoof looked at TOUV and we reminisced a little about the early Makefest workshops with Lego Submarines. At the end of the day it seemed fitting to slip Steam Engineers a couple of TOUV kits I’d brought in case anyone was interested. What follows is a testament to the power of opensource!

A few weeks ago I got some messages that Steam Engineers were working on an opensource control board for TOUV that also could be used for all manner of different projects. I then met up with Chris and Snoof at another maker event in North Wales and Chris placed the amazing controller design in my hands! Chris has used KiCad to create a large custom PCB with a Raspberry Pi RP2350 powering the device, there’s a “Cheap Yellow Display” equivalent board plugged in and a couple of joysticks on board, with a neat FreeCAD design for large easy to grab 3D printed handles. Two Toshiba TB6612FNG motor driver IC’s are also included giving 4 channels of motor control. There’s a large LiPo on the back and it can be programmed and charge the LiPo via the USB C. Best of all Chris and Snoof have created a custom prototype firmware, booting the device, it not only shows a lovely playful display, it also provides differential thrust to the thrusters allowing for a much finer piloting experience.

 It's such a lovely thing when people build something in response to or as an addition to something you've made and it always, none more so than in this case, creates something greater than the sum of it's parts. Fab.