I wrote a quick gawk script to parse the GPS log file and turn it into a KML. The orange line on this map is our launch last October and the much longer yellow line is last month's launch.

As you can see, our steering is not locked down, and that's because we're still controlling it from the command line. While this is all nice and hackery, it's no good for precision steering. A longer blog post on software/hardware architecture is on my priority list but seems to keep falling behind working on getting the software working.

We had a GoPro strapped to the antenna mast pointed at the boat during the last launch; I'm going to see if I can put that up on YouTube RSN.

Our plan had been to launch this weekend, but we had a couple of problems. First, one of our core team members is recovering from a nasty cold. Second, the splines on the servo output of our steering gear stripped. The brass spur gear definitely stripped and the steel output splines on the servo don't look great either. I'm ordering replacement parts for both so we can try again next weekend.

We're also working on designing a launch cart so we don't have to manually haul the boat down the launch ramp. It's not going to be anything fancy -- just a way to attach four HarborFreight wheels to a frame that will hold the boat and not collapse. There will be pictures when we're finished with it.

Once we have the software nailed down to at the least the point where we can do the JS control and basic waypoint navigation, we will pull the trigger on our control hardware update.