Hi all, I have a "no gas allowed" restriction on most of the lakes around me and as such am building out propulsion for a boat with more or less the strongest trolling motors I can find. I would really like to banish the tiller on it entirely. I'm perfectly comfortable disassembling the head to do things like replace the throttle with a nice PWM for way more efficient speed control. The thing I have not been able to figure out is how to steer the trolling motor with a cable assembly.
I thought about doing "fly by wire," but while it's simple enough to put a gear assembly onto a servo and turn the shaft back and forth, software for managing such a beast together with intuitive hardware to control it is still Wild West territory as far as I can tell. Off the shelf solutions are typically obscenely expensive at the power level I'm looking for -- e.g. I have found a 24V 5HP motor for $800, but anything remotely similar with electric steering is upwards of $1600.
Similarly, an off the shelf cable steering solution -- the only one I can gather exists, and even then I think it's not actually purchaseable as their website is broken -- is equally spendy. $1800 is literally what I am spending on a pontoon boat in reasonably good condition, and, well: https://www.amazon.com/Caroute-W400...ing+motor+steering+kit&qid=1681772499&sr=8-16
So, I'm curious if anyone knows of any reliable solutions here. I could try building something myself but I really don't want to trust steering on a somewhat large boat to my own questionable metal and/or woodworking skills. I've tried looking through eBay for the parts that permit "real" outboard motors to do this, but have so far come up with nothing, probably because I don't know the terms of art for the parts in question! Thanks for any hints.
I thought about doing "fly by wire," but while it's simple enough to put a gear assembly onto a servo and turn the shaft back and forth, software for managing such a beast together with intuitive hardware to control it is still Wild West territory as far as I can tell. Off the shelf solutions are typically obscenely expensive at the power level I'm looking for -- e.g. I have found a 24V 5HP motor for $800, but anything remotely similar with electric steering is upwards of $1600.
Similarly, an off the shelf cable steering solution -- the only one I can gather exists, and even then I think it's not actually purchaseable as their website is broken -- is equally spendy. $1800 is literally what I am spending on a pontoon boat in reasonably good condition, and, well: https://www.amazon.com/Caroute-W400...ing+motor+steering+kit&qid=1681772499&sr=8-16
So, I'm curious if anyone knows of any reliable solutions here. I could try building something myself but I really don't want to trust steering on a somewhat large boat to my own questionable metal and/or woodworking skills. I've tried looking through eBay for the parts that permit "real" outboard motors to do this, but have so far come up with nothing, probably because I don't know the terms of art for the parts in question! Thanks for any hints.
