We have a setup similar to the Blueboat. We are using 2 T200 thrusters for skid steering and a T500 in the center (intended for extra thrust). We are trying to add the 3rd motor that will give us extra thrust. This motor (T500) is placed in the center of the other two. We want to control this motor…

Hi @gademetriou - Welcome to the forums! Unfortunately, ArduRover does not have a frame type for a 3 motor skid-steer vehicle. To get things working you could develop a Lua script that controls the third motor output channel based on the average of the other two motors? Or, you could map it as a …

Hi Tony! Thanks for the quick reply. We tried the ardurover forums but could not get any straight answers. We tried several things. Mostly trying to map it to a servo output and a button (R1 or R2 on the Xbox controller) as you suggested here. We are doing something wrong apparently. The T500 jus…

Hi @gademetriou - Sorry for the frustrations! ArduSub is well setup to pass button pushes to servo channels, but things are a bit trickier with ArduRover. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible! A Lua script in no way means the thruster has to be on all the time! In this example , the T500 only turns…

Thanks for the info Tony! We will actually print and use the propeller you provided. We will design an adapter for attaching the new Thruster (T500 motor and new propeller) to out USV. We will go with your idea (suggestion) to set the T500 PWM to the average of the other two PWMs. We will worry a…

Hi @tony-white can you elaborate on the differences between Ardusub and Ardurover ref. servos / relays. I read this in the navigator hardware guide to mean all was good with Rover on the later firmware. “Support for relays requires ArduSub ≥ 4.1.1, and ≥ 4.4.0 for other ArduPilot firmwares.” It ma…

Sure thing @gademetriou - What is your goal for the additional motor’s use? When testing the BlueBoat with dual M500s and pr that larger printed prop, it was demonstrated that additional speed is quite expensive, from a power perspective! [image] As for that Lua example, an LLM like Claude, Gem…

[image] Giorgos: We are doing something wrong apparently. The T500 just peeps constantly in some cases. In the others (when it seems to initialize correctly) we get no control… nothing happens when the button is pressed. You should be able to check the SERVO_OUTPUT_RAW MAVLink messages in a M…

[image] Matthew - Carcinus Ltd: … can you elaborate on the differences between Ardusub and Ardurover ref. servos / relays. From a related previous post: [image] Relays on Navigator ArduRover doesn’t use the same type of joystick control as ArduSub, so instead of using the autopilot’s inte…

@tony-white , we developed (with the help of claude) a test script that will test the center thruster (T500) - before we do anything else we wanted to see it actually runs from a lua script. We connected the motor to Pin 4. And set the following: SERVO4_FUNCTION = 0 (for Lua control … correct?) …

[image] Giorgos: We connected the motor to Pin 4. And set the following: SERVO4_FUNCTION = 0 (for Lua control … correct?) There are different possible approaches here, but you’re mixing two of them, which won’t work. Per the API documentation , the set_output_pwm function you’re using sear…

Adding a 3rd motor for extra thrust

Blue Robotics Vehicles BlueBoat

tony-white (Tony White) July 16, 2025, 6:34am 15

@gademetriou Sure thing!

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