Dalhousie Microtransat Autonomous SailBoat Team (DalMAST)

We are a team of Dalhousie students designing and building a sustainable, autonomous sailboat that will sail itself from Nova Scotia to Ireland as part of international competition. Aside from our project, we try to promote the Ocean Engineering and Technology Industry by hosting events and competitions for students.

From 2015 to the fall of 2018, the sailboat team was managed by Dalhousie faculty, including the previous Dean of Engineering, Dr. Leon. The most recent iteration of the vessel, the Sea Leon, was launched in the summer of 2018, with great success. It travelled for more than 3700km over 76 days before it ceased to transmit its location. In 2018, the responsibilities of the sailboat were transferred over to Dalhousie engineering students.

Websites:

Our website: dalmast.squarespace.com, The competition: microtransat.org

Current Software Team

As of Feb 2022:

Ethan Johnston - Team Lead
Yiming Zhang - Team Member
Ope Adelasoye - Team Member
Grant Sutherland - Team Member
Mathew Cockburn - Actually on electrical team but really likes to code so we are borrowing them.

Credits

Alex Whidden - Conversion to FreeRTOS - REPORT
Blake Meech - REPORT
Anthony Chalmers
Serge Toutsenko
Julia Sarty
Thomas Gwynne-Timothy - REPORT
Jean Francois Bousquet

Let Ethan know if there is anyone else.

Technical Details and Background

Wiring, devices, mechanical background

Using a RTOS (FreeRTOS)

How this works and how to add tasks and how the kernal works.

Uploading Code

1. Plug in development board
2. Open Microchip Studio (Start Page should recognize SAM D20)
3. Open project (New_RTOS_Sailboat.atsln)
4. Open Putty (Speed: 57600 | Connection type: Serial)
5. Open Device Manager to make sure Virtual COM Port is equivalent to 'Serial line'
6. 'Open'
7. Move Back to Microchip Studio
8. Build -> Build Solution
9. Run

Uploading Waypoints:

Creating KML waypoints file from Google Earth: 1. 2. 3.

Uploading to EEPROM using Processing KML Uploader script

1. Download Processing
2. Place .kml in the same directory as the processing script.
3. Run script with

Function Map Diagram (From Yimming)

Navigation Algorithm

Radio Message Decoding Table

Using Test Functions

GUI setup instructions

In order to run the GUI that communicates with the radio module, Processing must be downloaded, which you can do here.

After installing, import the G4P library under Sketch > Import Library > Add Library > G4P

To run, open the file of type Proccessing Source Code

Useful Links and Resources

OLD Sailboat Overview
Thomas Report (Good for Radio Codes)
dalmast.squarespace.com