Testing... testing...

(View Malu Marine Test in a larger map)

Ever been to the garage with your car and they plug it into a computer and tell you where you have been and what happened? Kind of like the black box recorders on aircraft... well... click on any of the data points on the map and you'll see where we were and what was happening on King Malu during the first part of today's sail. The engine data is not valid data, just dummy data from my test system, but wind, gusts, depth etc etc is all from the instruments. It doesn't really work so well on the embedded map, if you follow the 'Malu Marine Test' link the data points can be seen more easily.

We're working with another company on developing and testing an electric drive system for yachts. We're working on the throttle part of it right now and I have been writing some program code to allow us to talk to the Raymarine equipment we have on board. With a little bit of luck we'll have the mark 3 version for testing before the snow falls on the plains of Ohio... [1]

The data is recorded onto a micro SD chip which I then copied to my Mac, imported to Microsoft Excel; imported the processed data to Google Fusion, and thence to Google Maps. It works!  Very pleased with that. 


Few more bugs to iron out with the system yet, but hopefully will do this with Tim is away for the next month. I have a load of parts on their way from Farnell's in the UK for the next stage. Tim is helping a friend deliver his new Lagoon 56 catamaran from La Rochelle in France to the east coast of Italy. You can watch his progress on his blog: tim-price.blogspot.com


[1] This is reference to a US company that purportedly said they would release software before the snow melted on the plains of Ohio. The meaning was one that they will not be rushed to create the right product, nor will they fix a tight timeline, rather that organic timelines are more meaningful.