FrySky + 9x + Telemetry Fishing line Feedback Help Required

[ademczuk]

A friend and I have a RC Fishing boat that has its own rod and reel that has caught over 40 fish. I've helped him extend the remote beyond the kids receiver range by getting him a Turnigy 9x but now the boat is too far to see how much of the fishing line has been unwound and when it has hit the bottom (around 80m).

Gallery: http://imgur.com/a/f7LjG
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/gleno2008/ ... rid&view=0

I was thinking of getting a SKY9x board and with the Frysky telemetry mod having some type of feedback from a brushed motor/stepper motor/servo. However I cannot find anyone who has tried to measure how much a motor has been unwound/wound, only RPM.

Could anyone recommend a solution to measuring out how many meters of line has been wound/unwound?

[pmullen503]

Some kind of encoder on the reel that outputs a voltage. Use a Frsky voltage sensor to measure it. You would have to manually calibrate it to make a voltage=feet of line chart.

If you just need to know when you've hit bottom, a simple micro switch to measure tension on the line might work, i.e. no tension= 0 volts= you've hit bottom.

[thomas9x]

Nothing off-the-shelf comes to mind that would lead to an easy FrSky interface. How about a cheap wireless video camera that is looking at the line-counter readout of your fishing reel? Plus you can FPV fish too.

[ademczuk]

Thanks Thomas, I'll keep that in mind for when we setup live FPV next year because at the moment its just a handycam.
pmullen, would you be able to link me to an encoder and volt sensor?
Would I need to create a circuitboard with electronics to bridge this?

[Rob Thomson]

Probably could do some sort of Arduino to send the data as altitude data in the frsky protocol. That would at least give you a measurement of distance.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[ademczuk]

Has there been anyone who works with RC cars. Surely anyone who has an RC car might want to know the distance the vehicle has travelled via telemetry.
That's exactly the kind of data I'm looking for.

edit: hobbyking has a data logger for $22 but I would somehow need to transmit that data over telemetry still
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... Meter.html

[Kilrah]

This won't really work, as it can't see which way the wheel is turning. So it would always count up even when you're rewinding...

[gohsthb]

You will need a rotary shaft encoder. You would probably connect this to the spool with the line on it. The idea is to count how many times the spool goes around, and that will determine how far the line has gone out. You will need some kind of micro controller like an arduino to do the counting. Then that will interface to the receiver through it's serial port. It sounds to me like a good idea to use the altitude display so you won't have to modify Er9x to much.

-Gohst
Some info about rotary shaft encoders is here: http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php?topic=124142.0

[ademczuk]

I havent got a modded board yet, could you reccomend one for ER9X?
Also how many alarms do you get out of the box with er9x?
I'm hoping to have a display on how much has been unwound and an alarm for when the rod has a bite from a fish (done using a rheostat and the battery data terminal)

Would it be easier to interface with a servo instead of a shaft encoder (after removing the lock on 180 degrees of motion)?

[Romolo]

Even better with a rotary encoder on the shaft interfaced with an arduino board transmitting altitude data digitally.

[ademczuk]

Does anyone happen to have any sourcecode for how to rotate a stepper motor on a micro arduino and then how that data can be passed to frsky?
I'm guessing through PPM?

[gohsthb]

http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/Libraries

They have libraries for almost anything you can think of. As far as your stepper motor, just look for the one called stepper. If you don't want to use an Arduino, you can still grab the library source code and see how they have done it.
-Gohst

[ReSt]

Found the description of the libraries, but ... where are the libraries ??
I simply can' find them.

Reinhard

[Kilrah]

They're supplied directly with the IDE.

[Romolo]

Anyway is not a good thing to trust the stepper motor, better to trust a rotary encoder, a motor may loose steps giving you bad infos about real turns. but also I'm considering another possibility:
I suppose your winder is driven in CC, so we may know how it turns just using a diode.
Then is sufficient a contact on the wheel to know turns, even better if you put the contact on a separate wheel.

[ademczuk]

Romolo,

So far using a diode appears most practical as I can get it closer to the diameter of the reel.
Has anyone in their travels seen a diode counting/measuring turns of a wheel attached to a motor?
I'm hoping that I could get a leg-up on this project as I'm sure someone has done it before, but I'm searching for the wrong things as I lack the knowledge at this point in time.

[ReSt]

Kilrah, thanks.
I found the libraries.

Reinhard

[Romolo]

the diode is to understand the motor direction, a magnetic contact to get turns..

[kaos]

Ha ha, this is the funniest topic I have seen. I mean a lot of fun.!
I am surprised that 20lb fish did not drag that little boat under water though. I used to be a fisherman when young. What is the biggest fish that little boat ever catch?
I have seen people using remote boat to drop the bait , but not actually fishing before.

I know you said you would do FPV next yr. But I do like Thomas' idea of FPV best and most practical for fishing from my previous fishing experience. A cheap Tx/rx (how far do you expect that boat is going out there?), a pan and tilt cam let you see the line counter and when there is a bite. put a bell at tip of the rod you may even hear the bell sounding with a mic when there is a bite. And you can drive the boat back with FPV. you know there are some fishes are 'sneaky' when they bite. they don't create a lot of shaking instead just quietly bend the rod slowly. A sensor may not be able to tell you if there is a bite. Ha, a lot of fun. Never thought about that before. True remote fishing experience.

[ademczuk]

We've held off on FPV mostly because we'll have to sink in another $150 after we've just invested $400 9x and telemetry with servos, controllers and better batteries.
So far the boat hasn't been pulled under after 40+ fish, the most being 12kg

Thinking laterally again I think instead of going down the route of FPV or Arduino I'll just use a brushed motor and connect it to the receiver, then remove the POT out of a servo and connect the data lines to the telemetry transmitter and the pot to the other end of the fishing spool (with a 10 to 1 gearbox in between). This way when the spool winds 10 revolutions the servo pot will wind 1 degree (equating to about 30cm) which will give me about 108 meters if the pot ends at 180 deg.
I'll ensure that only 100 meters of line is on the spool.

This way on my telemetry instead of a numeric value I'll have a percentage bar that will provide me with an alert tone when its low and I'll know that 100% is less than 100m. I guess if I wanted to I could ask around this community if its possible to replace alerts with audible tones declaring what meter its at, heck if you can do that then I should be able to ask if someone knows how to replace the percentage bar with numerical values for meters, thus solving my problem.. All without arduino/photo-diodes and the like.

[kaos]

This is fun. Here is an idea, not electronically sophisticated, but simple. use two single wire circuits.
1. to place the bait close to bottom. put a small CF rod on top of the finishing rod. Both rods has a metal contact and small electric wires. ( a Y or inverted T- shape metal contact on the CF rod and a metal ring close to the tip of the fishing rod) when in contact (the finishing rod is not bent = bait reached the bottom) and complete an electric circuit --> positive voltage. when the bait is not reaching the bottom the fishing rod will bend some what by the weight and the two contact will break --> 0 voltage.
I assume you can estimate how much time you need to spool the bait/weight back from bottom when hitting the rewind switch.

2. Fish on hook detection. Use a mercury switch at the tip of the finishing rod, align the angle when the tip is bent downward (fish on hook) the mercury switch will be on --> positive voltage, no fish--> 0 voltage. (you may need to play with the angle of the mercury switch a little depending on your weight and flexibility of your fishing rod)

While you are waiting for fish on hook, all you are looking at is 0 voltage by using one cheap voltage sensor for the analog port at 5.00 for both warning. postivie voltage is either the bait reaches the bottom or the fish is hooked.

This may not be the most accurate/sophisticated way (compare to knowing exactly how deep your bait is) but simple.

this way, you can fish in any depth of water as deep as your spool can hold the line and don't even need to know exactly how deep the water is.

[ademczuk]

Thanks Kaos,

The best part has been how open the 9x community has been. If I do have to get a microcontroller like a auduino nano, can I pair both the 8ch frsky reciever and a seperate arduino with a modded 9x so that the extra switches control the audiono controlled fishing rod and sensors?

I like your mercury switch solution but I think it would give false readings when moving the boat around. I'll go for the Rheostat so its a bit more robust.
I don't completely understand your CF rod solution, could you elaborate with mspaint?

[Kilrah]

remove the POT out of a servo and connect the data lines to the telemetry transmitter and the pot to the other end of the fishing spool (with a 10 to 1 gearbox in between). This way when the spool winds 10 revolutions the servo pot will wind 1 degree (equating to about 30cm) which will give me about 108 meters if the pot ends at 180 deg.
I'll ensure that only 100 meters of line is on the spool.

Indeed, if you could do that then all you'd have to do is hook the pot to the frsky receiver and you'd be done with it. With open9x on the radio, you can already have both a bar and a numeric value, and alarms. On the sky9x board (or voice mod for stock board) you can have the value spoken to you.

[kaos]

ah, you want to move the boat around while the bait is already down. that does create some problem with the mercury switch method. But as long as you ignore the positive signal while moving the boat (unless you are so lucky the fish bites while you are moving ) or you are actually trying to do trolling? I guess while moving the boat, it will give false positive reading, but once you stop the boat, if there is no fish, you should have a 0 voltage, only a constant positive voltage will indicate a fish is on hook. It is the same principle as your bell on the tip, it will give false warning, but any experienced fisherman should able to tell that is a false warning or a fish.

I was under the impression that you are carrying the bait out. then when you reach the destination, you drop the bait then wait for fish to be hooked.

the CF rod is just for dropping the bait and tell whether the bait hit the bottom. I am on a road trip , don't have access to drawing program (has a basic mac with me).

Basically you attach a CF rod with one wire , the rod is on top of finishing rod (but separate), the tip of the CF rod has a metal contact made in a Y or inverted T shape to press against the metal ring(the other wire contact) on the fishing rod. on the fishing rod there is a metal ring (attached to a wire too) touches the Y/T contact on the CF rod. when there is no tension on the finishing rod (bait hit bottom), the two contact will touch and close the circuit. when there is tension on the finishing rod (bait is not at the bottom, the rod bends a little by the weight), these two contact separates and there is an open circuit.

[ademczuk]

I pulled apart a servo to see how I could possibly gear it to wind the line but unfortunately a gearing system and wheel the size of a bicycle doesn't provide enough rotations for the 180deg limited Pot.
What I'm looking into now is making an Arduino RC Winch that measures the line. I'll have to check back with this community to see how to change the pulse width modulation into frysky's format once I read some books on arduino and get some packaged source.

I'll give your CF rod a try. You've also reminded me that I need to at some stage create a strain gauge so that a measurement of the type of fish hooked can be relayed to the 9x, but one thing at a time.

[kaos]

I'll give your CF rod a try. You've also reminded me that I need to at some stage create a strain gauge so that a measurement of the type of fish hooked can be relayed to the 9x, but one thing at a time.

good project. BUT, I doubt electronic gadget will ever replace the 'experience' of a real fisherman though. just like anything else.
keep your result posted. Like I said this is fun. I may start fishing again by making a boat like yours.

[ademczuk]

agreed and ill measure fish weight and pull through the current