Raspberry Pi to skipper microship across Atlantic
FishPi served
Raspberry Pi's journey to punters pockets has hardly gone swimmingly, but as it prepares to cross the Atlantic in a homemade autonomous boat - aptly dubbed FishPi - the budget Linux PC continues to make quite a splash in the tech pool.
FishPi - the brainchild of enthusiast Greg Holloway - is a 20in long vessel that navigates using GPS and a compass. Solar-powered batteries provide the juice for a 40mm Kort propeller which Holloway hopes will be sufficient to push the vessel across the Atlantic.
The Raspberry Pi unit is encased in a tupperware box to keep it nice and dry. If only the Titanic had such state-of-the-art protection, eh?
With the FishPi still in the proof-of-concept stage, there's a way to go yet, but if you can't wait for its maiden voyage, you can see the craft in action on 3 July 2012 at the Nottingham Hackspace Raspberry Jam. Sail away. ®
COMMENTS
A smuggler's dream?
Wow, an indetectably small, self-powered, autonomous vessel that can be programmed with a destination then just pushed off and it finds its own way there. Best of all, it's cheap. I wonder if the designer will be inundated with orders from exactly the sort of customers he doesn't want to deal with - but finds it impossible (or just unhealthy) to turn away.
That is, if it doesn't fall foul of the Gulf Stream and end up in Norway.
Re: You're missing out on the whole point of this
Call it Pi-In-The-Sky, and you've got a winner :)
Proof-of-concept stage?
... Really? To me it looks like a boat that's been built in a garden shed that someone has placed their lunch box on with a Pi placed inside it... No wires, no batteries, no solar panels, no steering rods, no propeller, no.....nothing.
If I go and dig out one of my sons polystyrene planes (you know, the slot together ones) and place my Pi next to it, could this be viewed as a PoC for flying across the Atlantic - I'll call it the PiPlane and submit to the internet.
Pirates!
They will board it and add a huge disk array full of goodies and a sat link. Yarr!
Re: Proof-of-concept stage?
Surely you should call it the Pi-Lot :P
