Need a bit of welding for a nautical project. Might be a bit more PR

[Jim Pugh]

Hi gang,

My boss helps out with the Rolex Fastnet race (we did one-not doing that again cheers), he basically sits on a lighthouse on the finishing line, firing the cannon and loggging when boats cross the finish line.
This year he is electing to build a transit lamp, basically a light you can see from sea, that will turn from blue to yellow as you pass a certain imaginary line.
hes going to do this with a paddle arrangement-think of an estate agents sign, with arrays of leds on each side of the sign one side blue one side yellow. As a boat approches the line they will see one colour, then as they are on the line instantaneous 2 then the other colour when passed.

This is the first time this has been attempted, and the useful thing is that boats will know when they have crossed, so can update their own logs, as when you get multiple boats passing the line in succession you cant keep up with the cannon. Deciding line finishes aint quite so simple as with horse racing. In close finishes the skippers declared finish time is incidental to decisions. This gizmo gives them a fairly accurate indication of crossing the line.

Anyhoo he wonders if he could throw some cash at the space to get a bit of plate about 450mm square welded to a pole. it needs to be strong enough to cope with high winds for a week. I am sure that it will get mentioned in the Royal Ocean racing clubs various feeds, and Im sure we can attach RLABs help.

We are not on the scrounge here, but thought someone might like to help make something awesome-or indeed contribute any ideas. We are wondering about whether painting the blue side blue would increase range the hard part about night buoyage is finding the buggers, once you spotted it its fairly easy to keep it on view, so earlier the better. for instance-we are going to use 12V worth of superflux leds  so any ideas about anything received. Run off a small generator so power is not a hugeissue, but one that should be considered.

Cheers guys-you ready for this bloody workbench yet?

[Alan Wood]

You could do it on one side by interleaving yellow and blue leds on c PWM current controlled circuits, switch between them instead of rotating the sign. 

Also CBPool will make ALU boards good for this purpose : http://www.pcb-pool.com/ppuk/order_productconfiguration_js.html

regards

Al

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[Hugo Mills]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 09:01:45AM +0100, Alan Wood wrote:
> You could do it on one side by interleaving yellow and blue leds on c PWM
> current controlled circuits, switch between them instead of rotating the
> sign.

Won't work if you have multiple ships passing the point close to
each other. Plus you need to know exactly where they are (which can be
difficult). The design suggested provides yellow illumination to one
half of the sea and blue to the other half -- without the need even
for anything as complicated as electricity (if you have coloured glass
on your oil lamps. :) )

Hugo.

=== Hugo Mills: hugo@... carfax.org.uk | darksatanic.net | lug.org.uk ===
PGP key: 65E74AC0 from wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net or http://www.carfax.org.uk
--- "No! My collection of rare, incurable diseases! Violated!" ---

[Bob Dunlop]

Hi,

On Wed, May 22 at 10:31, Jim Pugh wrote:
...

> This year he is electing to build a transit lamp, basically a light you can see from sea, that will turn from blue to yellow as you pass a certain imaginary line.

Why blue and yellow ?
I'd have thought blue and red would have given you as easier colour
discrimination, or are there problems with displaying red lights at sea ?

Also perhaps blink the lights on alternating sides. A flashing light will
be easier to detect against others in the dark. Possibly also a sharper
defined transition from one state to the other. Again is there problems
with blinking lights ?


Alternativly shine a laser along the finish line 15ft above the deck.
You've crossed the line when your sail lights up.

[Jim Pugh]

I tried to talk him into lasers but we wont have it!

> Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 09:11:20 +0100
> From: hu...@carfax.org.uk
> To: reading-...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: [RDG-Hack] Need a bit of welding for a nautical project. Might be a bit more PR

[Stuart Livings]

Lasers + the unpredictable reflection of water don't sound like a fantastic idea :)

I think your original design will be tricky to pull off because of the angle of light transmission from LEDs.  However aircraft carriers use the same principle in a different way to guide aircraft onto the deck accurately.

What you have is a large baffle with a long slit in it.  Behind the panel, in an arc, you have your lit array of LEDs.  One side of the array is yellow (or whatever colour you need), the other half is blue.  The slit is oriented vertically and the join between the yellow and blue LEDs is also vertical, parallel to the slit.

When the apparatus is observed the angle at which you observe it will mean that you can see either yellow or blue LEDs.  You could even use more colours to indicate how far from the transition they are, e.g. red for the last 15 degrees etc.  This apparatus is useful up to 180 degrees of sweep/observation.

Stuart

[barnaby]

Sounds a great project, love to be involved.

I realise they would be slightly harder to setup, but wouldn't leading
lights provide a more traditional approach to marking a transit?