OVERVIEW | HARDWARE | SOFTWARE | GALLERY | THE TEAM



For our ME218C An Even Deadlier Catch project, we built a wirelessly controlled boat to catch crabs. Crabs were simulated by RFID cards placed in crab pots around the Terman fountain.

The player used the controller to drive the boat over different crab pots to catch crabs. The amount of crab catch was determined wirelessly by Neptune, the central computer. When the crab capacity was full, the player drove the boat to the unloading dock to deliver his catch. Boats were assigned to one of two fleets: the Red or Green fleet. Boats worked together together to harvest crabs. Whichever fleet caught the most crabs won!

Wireless communication between the controller, boats, and Neptune took place over Xbee24 radios.



Our 3 player inputs:
  1. Throttle:
    2. The throttle was created with a potentiometer. Moving the throttle back and forth allowed the player to drive the boat backwards and forwards.
  2. Accelerometer:
    3. An accelerometer was placed inside the controller. The player tilted the entire controller side to side to steer the boat.
  3. Microphone:
    4. When the player spoke into the microphone, the player lit up the boat LEDs.




Video from our grading session, 5/26/2010