Nomadness

The Nomadic Research Labs Geek’s Vacation Program is back in full swing, bringing back excellent memories of the Olden Days in the BEHEMOTH and Microship labs. Brilliant techies would arrive from far-away places to dive into a project with me, contributing not only their own formidable expertise but giving mine a much-needed shot in the arm… whether through skill-building or just the motivation of working together. My old friend Tim Nolan designed the Microship 8-channel peak-power-tracking solar charge controller about a decade ago, and he just flew back to Wisconsin after 10 days here aboard Nomadness.

This time, we worked together on some of the ship power projects… notably installation of the forward photovoltaic array, along with extensive cruft removal and internal system upgrades. The beautiful stainless substrate for the solar panel was recently fabricated by Derek Peterson in Stanwood; Tim and I bonded six 30-watt modules onto this, bussed them into a series-parallel configuration, then wrestled it into place with some temporary wood fixtures at the interface between the panel and its support struts. In the photo, you can see notches on the sides to clear the backstays… and the extra metal border provides a little bit of mounting space for antennas and cockpit lighting.

The tan fabric under the boom is a sort of bimini that came with the boat; it zips to the trailing edge of the dodger and then ties somewhat clumsily to the arch. This will go away, with the new structure providing a starting point for a more robust cockpit enclosure… but it will do for the moment. The distant edge of the solar panel is supported by the radar arch, which also carries the cabling.

These photovoltaic modules were custom-made long ago by Solarex for the Microship project, and consist of a Tedlar-encapsulated sandwich with no metal backing… very fragile. The wires emerge from the back near the edge with little fillets of silicone; to clear these, we drilled 3/4″ holes with Cecil the milling machine (Cecil be ‘da Mill).

I agonized for quite a while over the proper adhesive for this project, having recently been driven a bit crazy by the problem of bonding neodymium magnets to aluminum brackets for the pilothouse curtains. Heat is the enemy, and even with preparatory solvents and surface-sanding I’ve had many of them fall apart from differing coefficients of thermal expansion (and lousy epoxy adhesion to the nickel plating). Solar panels get very hot, so I was concerned about the mess that could result from a poor choice of goo.

We decided to take a chance on high-temperature 3M VHB (Very High Bond) adhesive tape #4646, though the thickness of .025″ did introduce the risk of cracking the silicon wafers if we were overzealous during application. Time will tell if this was a good choice, but so far it has handled a few hot days without delaminating or doing anything else disturbing. I debated about leaving a little gaposis for outgassing, then imagined it being an ingress point for water that will freeze and decided against it… I might even double down on that conclusion with a surrounding fillet of sealant. (The tape pattern is a full perimeter along with a single strip down the center.)

Once the modules were bonded in place, it was time for the cabling… I slumped at the desk to rest my back while Tim took over with ratchet crimper and heat gun. We decided to wire them into a 24-volt series-parallel configuration (I would have liked a higher voltage to reduce I²R cabling loss as much as possible, but the total array size will be 14 modules once the second panel is mounted over the dinghy, and it doesn’t parse any other way). The bundle of red and gray wires will be spliced to a jacketed #10 cable, with another for the aft array of 8 modules; these terminate at an Outback MX60 solar charge controller, which maximizes the power point and pushes current into the batteries via a dedicated shunt (with an Ethernet connection to the other Outback power equipment to allow centralized monitoring and control).

The final stage was installation… physically difficult, but simplified by Derek’s excellent design work, including the hinging fixture he is holding in the photo at left. I had previously done a test-fit of the frame once these were mounted to the top of the arch on either side of the radar, and that left one loosely defined TBDWL item (To Be Dealt With Later): the angled connection to a pair of support struts that terminate at split collars on the arch support legs (right).

The top ends of the tubing struts contain three welded-in half-inch nuts; I chased these with a tap to work out the rather substantial thermal distortion, added stainless rod-ends, and then, with Tim holding everything level, pinned them to temporary chunks of wood that will be replaced by stainless now that we actually have something to measure. Nothing on a boat is ever parallel, square, or the same on both port and starboard sides… that’s part of their charm, I suppose, but it can turn fabrication projects into hair-pulling challenges.

Most important: the new addition has received the Isabelle seal of approval. She now has a high soft shaded spot, complete with a bit of cordage to provide amusement! Here, she is checking the wire routing…

Other Power Upgrades

Tim’s geek vacation also yielded some other much-needed changes to the Nomadness power system. Looking at the relevant section of the To-Do List, we decided to focus on battery-management and shore-power issues.

Please don't ever do this. These "terminals" were carrying 30 amps of shore power, mashed under screws on an old AC source-selector switch in an almost completely unserviceable location!

Much of this was in the category of cruft-elimination, and there are now three plastic grocery bags of extracted wire in the lab along with a few eBayables… including a triple battery isolator formerly used for the alternator, a smaller two-bank unit that once took care of a solar panel, and a galvanic isolator that was used to control stray-current corrosion. We also excised a scary old shore-power fire-starter selector switch with pitted contacts and redneck wiring. It’s really scary, sometimes, to go through this process and realize what I’ve been living with…

We didn’t change the business end of the engine-charging system (a vintage Lestek 130-amp alternator and a Balmar 4-stage regulator), but eliminated the downstream battery isolator that is basically three huge diodes with lots of cooling fins… allowing charge current to flow to multiple banks while preventing them from discharging to each other. But the cool kids these days are using a new device called an Automatic Charging Relay (ACR); I first heard of this when my marine electrician friend back in La Conner, Al Felker, suggested it while extracting an antique shore-power change-over relay that had been rendered obsolete by the Outback (and the inverter-charger before it… talk about relics!). These contraptions notice when charging is happening and connect battery banks together without diode losses… then keeps them that way until the state of charge drops far enough that isolation is needed to allow such niceties as later engine-starting.

While doing all this, we were hauling out old dead-end cables, discovering lots of naughty things like loads connected directly to the 690 amp-hour house bank (some without fuses, each a potential harness-melter or boat-destroyer). Every exorcised no-no added to the clarity and safety of the system, and the new drawing is much less confusing. This is all stuff I’ve wanted to do for ages, but I often need a rather strong nudge to start tearing apart things that work and are hard to reach. Huge thanks to Tim…

The final task of his time here was installation of the Charles ISO-G2 isolation transformer, which completely severs all direct connections between shore power/ground systems and those aboard the boat. This protects the hull from induced corrosion (which can be severe) and prevents delicate humans from providing a return path to shore through their bodies. All metal boats should do this as a matter of course, and I’ve been hauling this 60-pound monster around for a couple of years without actually hooking it up… largely because the AC side of my power system was such a mess.  Now it is in place, and ground-isolation measurements are in the multiple-megohm range. In this photo, Tim is working on the jumper wires that parallel windings to configure the transformer for 120-volt operation (it also handles 240), with Isabelle doing quality-control checks on his crimping job. I bolted this down to the plywood substrate of the power bay, but the 60 Hz hum is quite noticeable; vibration-damping mounts are on order.

And then, a much-anticipated sailing day! We humans had a wonderful time tacking back and forth while exploring our new back yard in the San Juan Islands, but Izzy was not at all happy about it. She did manage to stoically ride it out until we docked… whereupon she bolted and tried to catch the ferry back to the mainland so she could hitchhike to the shelter and take another shot at finding a suitable human for the cat-support staff position. She got over the trauma, but clearly needs some more time on water… and she’s not the only one…

I’ve been quiet in this blog lately, not wanting to write a series of posts about the numbingly boring topic of moving, but now it is essentially done but for one final trailer load to bring the Microship from Camano Island. I am no longer based in La Conner, where a long shoaling channel with tricky currents separated me from open water (but where the proximity of workspace to boat was as good as it can get).

The new trade-off resolves very differently… Nomadness is about three boat-lengths away from putting up her sails, right on the end tie to the south of the Friday Harbor ferry terminal…

Living aboard Nomadness at her new dock in Friday Harbor

The lab is at the other end of town (hence the bicycle on the stern rail), and is 2200 square feet that I am just starting to organize after far too many ferry trips involving a 50-foot truck-trailer rig packed with tonnage. I’ll spare you the photos of box-mountains, and even those showing the beginnings of organized workspace, but I do want to introduce Cecil, posed next to the drill press named Big Red (now seeming rather a misnomer):

Cecil be 'da Mill

This is excellent space for a project, even with the commute (annoying at times, but that’s a First World problem). At the moment, I’m in a mad rush to finish basic setup of work surfaces, inventory, security cams, and all that other infrastructure stuff… August will be a full month of boat geekery featuring Tim Nolan, coming from Wisconsin to take a geek’s vacation and help with the power system, followed by Daniel Collins, fresh from an intense adventure in a Gulf Stream gale.

The most significant recent project aboard Nomadness is the lab desk substrate, something I’ve been thinking about for ages. The entire console system design was frozen, awaiting something more than the crude plywood visualization model that has been there for a year; thanks to the creative energy of Fred Westergaard, it is now complete (and gorgeous):

Nomadness lab desktop and integrated tool cabinet

The desktop is 1.5″ thick, laminated, and very well supported all around in addition to a stainless post in the center. One of the more novel features is a 32″ x 16″ steel plate inset along the middle of the front edge, allowing magnetic fixturing for lights and key tools. I’ve already moved into the tool cabinet, and can observe that it is a lot easier to find things when it is convenient to put them away in the first place. The left edge of that box defines the start of the wrap-around console of 13U rackspaces.

I’ve said this countless times, but I’ll try to be better about blogging here. Most of the project details have been published in the Nomadness Report, which is now a monthly except *cough* for June… which didn’t happen. Issue #20 is now underway, including a long feature about desk construction, the Raymarine E7 chart plotter, the power project, and details about the new life in Friday Harbor.

It feels wonderful to be here, with sails drifting by and a constant buzz of nautical activity. Much more to come!

In the April issue of the Nomadness Report, I ran this little feature… thought it might be fun to share it more widely here in the blog:

The Nomadness Emulation & Telepresence System
April 1, 2012

Finally, as this issue draws to a close, I want to tell you about the skunkworks project that is underway here at Nomadic Research Labs, shepherded by a hand-picked team of engineers.

We ran an extrapolation of my progress on nautical technomadic projects, including Microship. In 20 years, a staggering amount of human time and other resources have been poured into these endeavors.

Along the way, we formulated the Roberts Law of Fractal To-Do List Complexity, which postulates that each item on a list is itself the title of a new list. This proceeds recursively all the way down (like the famed turtles), providing endless opportunities for discovery along with the potential for negative progress as work is completed (exacerbated by product life cycles and the emergence of seductive new technologies).

Meanwhile, we must contend with the well-known adage that the average completion time of a homebuilt boat is 137 years. While the Microship project was back-burnered after only about 10% of that and Nomadness is already a perfectly serviceable boat, the layers of added geekery are restoring the developmental time-sinks that were eliminated by starting with something that was well-suited to voyaging before I started tinkering with it.

Lest these combined influences result in one of those never-ending projects that you can find in any marina, we’ve decided to leapfrog the current trajectory with a system designed to provide adventure opportunities well into my dotage.

The Nomadness Emulation and Telepresence System (NETS) eliminates the inconvenient issues of handling a heavy boat and powerful rig with an ever-weakening body — a problem that has led many intrepid voyagers to trade in their sailboats for trawlers. Unwilling to go quietly to the Dark Side, I have decided to replace myself with a suite of real-time telemetry tools coupled to an immersive simulation pod, providing a toolset for adventure synthesis.

The idea was sparked by a nameless wag who once quipped, “you can simulate sailing by standing in a cold shower and tearing up hundred-dollar bills.” On a hunch, we set up a double-blind test to see if this was indeed the case, and while there were numerous flaws in the illusion, we found that 42% of our experimental subjects reacted to the shower chamber with nearly identical levels of adrenaline and cardiac arousal (especially when they were required to use their own hundred-dollar bills, an experience that one participant compared to dropping by West Marine for a “simple plumbing problem” before financial issues forced him to quit the experiment).

Encouraged, we decided to extend the metaphor with more of a live boat experience, and pulled out all the stops. Hydraulic control systems drive a helm pod with six-axis motion simulation, including all three translation axes (fore-aft, lateral, and vertical) as well as roll, pitch, and yaw. Background vibration and cross-axis motion are minimized by dedicated closed-loop controllers with accelerometer feedback, faithfully reproducing the streaming input data with critical damping.

Our visual production team surrounded the helm pod with a large dome that is essentially a “hemisphere plus,” allowing us to present the illusion of wave patterns that go negative relative to the apparent horizon. A dedicated network of graphics processors provides gigapixel, flicker-free imagery at about 60 frames per second, depending on wearable Polhemus sensors to devote the bulk of this considerable processing power to the region bounded by the pilot’s current gaze vector and further optimized in the foveal region as detected by laser retro-reflection.

Since the real Nomadness is not yet complete, all initial testing of the NETS has involved simulated data… something that has been entertaining for all concerned. Roll-overs and knockdowns are as easy to generate as a lazy reach or a muggy day in the Doldrums; with environmental controls and saline nozzles, it’s just a matter of coordinating fluid-physics emulation with the corresponding reaction of the simulated ship. Sea-sickness was initially a problem, but after some fMRI data collection we were able to synchronize kinesthetic and visual data. Powerful broad-spectrum illumination induces melanin synthesis when needed, and of course we can hammer the helm with wind of sufficient velocity to complete the illusion of a gale.

Still, it doesn’t take long for the novelty to wear off when you know it’s just a simulation. Phase 2 involves a massive real-time data feed from Nomadness herself, including everything from a suite of high-def cameras to accelerometers and environmental sensors. The link is bidirectional, as the ship is unmanned to optimize the illusion of being there.

When complete, the pod’s wheel, instruments, lines, winches, and other affordances will transmit live command and control data to the ship, driving end effectors coupled to corresponding components (amplified by a feebleness constant to compensate for my aging). Even biological factors are taken into consideration; invoking the zippered man-hour extension facility to utilize the 4U2PN2 device (rail emulation if outside, head if below) is fraught with a level of peril matched to the current PSD plot of accelerometer data… since we realized that being too casual about such matters in the middle of a gale would shatter the entire illusion.

It remains to be seen how well remote socialization works, but we are preparing a series of tests involving anchorages, marinas, and raft-ups… with a crusty avatar engaging as needed with live sailors.

Once complete, the NETS pod will be installed in the Friday Harbor extended care facility where Kirsten works as a nurse, and I will move aboard to while away my sunset years in a voyage of discovery.

Updated August 20, 2012:  There has been a huge change of plans… I am now living aboard Nomadness in Friday Harbor, with nearby lab facilities in a sweet town and easy sailing about 100 feet off my dock… but it nuked this year’s planned adventure. I’m leaving the text below in place, however, since this is now extremely likely to happen in 2013. The date is adjusted accordingly, assuming I have not already sold the boat by then!

We have established the 2013 adventure plan… a loop around Vancouver Island beginning sometime in July, with a small flotilla of (mostly) sailboats and a relaxed schedule.

Microship Available for Vancouver Island Circumnavigation

This geeky boatlet has been sitting in its lab for a decade now, with no on-water adventures since a Puget Sound loop in 2001. With about a decade of intensive effort on the project and incalculable cost, that’s bugging me more and more… and the latest twist is that I have just sold the building as part of my move toward full-time voyaging in a much larger boat.

Continue reading →

The bulk of this post is an excerpt from Issue #14 of the Nomadness Report, which is finding its voice and shaping up well (with a compilation of the first 12 issues now available as an eBook). Much of the content in these early issues is context-setting, both in terms of the recently changed facilities scene and the overall project objectives.

It was in the latter spirit that I found myself discussing the mental model necessary to take on something so insanely complex. Companies handle this sort of thing by creating a hierarchy of departments and design groups, but I’m working more or less alone on this tour de force of geekery… and that is frankly overwhelming. I have already lived through some of the risks of this: watching completed systems become obsolete while spending years building the physical substrate that should have come first (Microship), getting seduced by gizmology and letting it overwhelm issues of usability (BEHEMOTH), diving into design without a clear internal “elevator pitch” to keep things focused (Shacktopus), buying gadgets long before they are really needed and then watching them go stale on the shelf (Nomadness). If it weren’t for the existence proof of well-executed successful projects (Winnebiko, Winnebiko II, Bubba, & Polaris), I’d start to worry… Continue reading →