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This was a super fun project I did over Christmas in 2019 as a contract for Dometic (Previously SeaStar Solutions), where I built a real-world hardware-integrated simulator for Optimus 360 systems.
This allows demo stands equipped with all the steering system hardware of a fully kitted boat integrated with a simulator which reflects the real-world motions of the physical actuators in real-time. The system I developed had to communicate over CAN to communicate all of the details to simulate the boat steering.
Getting the feel of the boat physics right was a massive challenge, but with the expert input of some of the boaters at Dometic and some physics simulations, the final product felt extremely accurate. The simulator also had to fill the role of the engine giving RPM and heartbeat feedback over NEMA2000 CAN standard to the steering system.
The simulator works with a joystick as well as a regular helm and even supports possible multiple-helm station configurations. Overall the game works great and gets used at many boat shows to show off the Dometic Steering systems!
Here you can see the frame of the game, top-down with randomly selected targets for docking and a little minigame for counting your time to dock with penalties for collisions! A really cool sub-pixel movement algorithm had to be made for the animations to all be smoothed out!
The Simulator was shown prominently during the Miami Boat Show 2019 and has since had sister stands built and displayed at multiple boat shows around the world!
Photo credits: https://www.tradeonlytoday.com/tech/miami-2019-sea-star-develops-fully-electric-steering-actuators
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