Autopilot Remote Control

When idling home with a fair wind after a hard day's swimming, the best place to be is on the foredeck in the sun. Which gives rise to certain problems when the boat has to be steered.

WINGS is equipped with a Raytheon (now RayMarine) Autohelm 2000+ tiller autopilot. While the manufacturer produces a remote control for this autopilot, it is quite expensive. All I need is a small box with 4 buttons, a single chip micro and a long wire...

The Seatalk communications protocol used by the 2000+ is proprietry to the manufacturer. However, a Web search brought me across Thomas Knauf's Seatalk pages which provide a detailed description of the protocol and the data format. My thanks to Thomas for his excellent work without which I would never have started this project.

These pages describe the various stages in my project to construct such a remote control. They are being written as the project progresses and will be added to as each stage is completed (and time permits...)

1st March 2004: Seatalk communications test v.1 and autopilot <-> PC interface
3rd March 2004: Seatalk communications test v.2 (interrupt driven routine)
17th March 2004 Minor bugfixes to test v.2
17th March 2004 Complete basic Remote Control!
14th March 2005 Added circuit diagram

Disclaimer

All information and software on these pages is provided without warranty or liability. All legal use of the described circuits and other information is allowed provided that the author is not held responsible for any consequences.

Contact me at lzamm@phys.um.edu.mt