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 8th
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.