Sail Away
Create your own sail boat and steer it with a low-cost remote control.
Remotely control a K-Nex sailboat
Lead Image © Ints Vikmanis, 123RF.com
Depending on its purpose, a sailboat can come in a variety of forms and can be built with any number of different materials. We wanted a simple but stable and light design, so for our remote control sailboat, we chose K'Nex construction pieces and a catamaran configuration (Figure 1). (See the "Materials List" box for all the materials we used.)
For the electronics, we had good success with a wireless RF (radio frequency) module. These modules are relatively low in cost, and they do not require any fancy programming. We used an Arduino Uno with a prototyping shield, but smaller and lighter weight Arduino components like a Trinket Pro or a Nano could be used as well. The battery pack provided 6 x 1.5V=9V of power. The Arduino Uno can accept 6-20V power input. The servo and the RF module were powered directly from the 5V pin on the Arduino module.
Building the Boat
For the boat design, we used four plastic bottles, two bottles on each side of the catamaran, as the hulls. The boat structure needed to be big enough to support four bottles firmly taped to the bottom and rigid enough to handle the waves and wind on the sail. The base structure had a reinforced center line, and rows of arms provided a structure on which to tape the water bottles (Figure 2).
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