T&T: Autopilot Technology

[Dave Cooper]

<Mike wrote: Scott Bulger and I have been discussing by phone the topic of
the redundant autopilot and what makes a good choice for an installed backup

system. You can assume we will start posting on this topic, but start
another thread.>

We wrestled with this subject and possible solutions for sometime before we
came upon a solution that works well for us and I would think for others.
Basically two complete systems of the same components.

We have two Kobelt 30 cu in rams either of which is sized to operate the
rudder if required. These are normally operating in parallel and are driven
by two 24 volt reversing pumps. Either of these can operate one or both
rams. We then have two autopilot drive boxes. Each of these operate in
conjunction with the two autopilot computers in a master/slave relationship.
Each time power is applied the relationship changes so you will always know
if you have a failure during system test.

The drive boxes, pumps and computers are powered with a selection device
that has 2 separate power sources and picks the best one so it takes two
power sources to fail before you lose power. I have a third source...the
genset battery which can be sourced quickly if both primary sources were to
fail which is doubtful.
One source is a dedicated set of batteries just for the Fly by Wire system.
The second source is the house battery bank.
The communications from the pilothouse and the rudder compartment are via
two independent CanBus's.
We have 6 steering stations each of which has full
steering/autopilot/throttle/shift and bowthruster.
As back up to the fact that everything can fail we have a emergency tiller
that plugs into the rudder post. One thought to is to add a simple linier
ram to the end of that and have yet another backup to the back up's backup
;-)

Again we have no wheel in the pilothouse or elsewhere so this system does
need to have very good reliability.

All of this hardware/software is off the shelf and fully integrated by the
vender.

We tried to work this sort of system thru a lot of the well know vendors of
autopilots but didn't have any luck till we ran into Otto Hollborn,
www.tecnautic.com  who is the US rep for Tecnautics. He configured us the
system we wanted and more than we expected we could get off the shelf. We
are very happy and it has preformed beyond our expectations.

Again we are nothing but a customer/user of this great gear. Don't own the
stock....yada yada.

Cheers


Dave
Swan Song