Hardware for Twin Motor RC Homemade Boat. Wooden Hull and Remote Control. ~7mph Speed With New Battery. Very Fun to Build

Me and my friend made this boat for a school project. It was a working twin engine RC boat from scratch (as in making all the non-electronic parts, and programming the motors in the C++ language). The boat should go seven or so miles per hour, as well as turning and going backwards. Our design is very unique, as our boat will operate without a rudder, instead it will have two motors (one on the right side and one on the left). The rudder is a rudimentary tool for boats as it lets them turn, but our boat doesn’t have one. Instead, we turn one motor off, and have the other one on. The boat will turn in the direction of the off motor.

You mainly need a rudimentary electronics kit with some extra parts. If you would like a wooden hull, have some thin wood as well and wood glue. You also need a computer to upload the code and a good lipo battery.

At first, we used an iron to heat-bend some thin wooden strips. We had 2 surf-board shapes (one bigger than the other), and we glued them ontop of the other. We then added more wooden strips to hold them in place. Add some angled small wooden strips to make up the hull. Then add a fin and supporting pieces to the bottom, adding foam to make up for the airspace. Sand everything down and use wood glue to hold it. We used hot glue to keep the pieces in place as the wood glue did its work.

In order to make the boat float, we added a thin plastic film and waterproofing glue of some sort to hold it in place. It took a few days to let it dry so keep it in place with rope and tape. When it is fully dry it should be able to float in water. This step is brief because I wasn't there the day my friend did it.

This is brief as it is only a few things. Drill angled holes in the hull and add some metal rods. This is where you will put the propeller. Keep in mind that these poles should be long but supported because water can come up if you are reversing (maybe). Add waterproofing around them.

So for this step we made a system where a radio reads signal from the controller (we will make this later) and sends it to the Uno. Then the brain tells the motors what to do. The other pictures are the wiring. You can copy them.

This is the part of the boat which controlls it. It uses an arduino uno, 2 joysticks, a 4 AA batteries, and some other things. The batteries go on the bottom of the wooden panel which holds the controller.

For this we put a plastic panel to cover the top of the boat and protect the electronics. We glued some bycicle inner tube to keep out the water. To ensure waterproofness, we cut up some sponges to absorb water. Make sure that the screws don't strip the wood around them because this lets water get in and ruin the boat. You will need to unscrew the panel and plug in the battery to turn it on.