Blueboat Basestation Capabilities

[harshmattoo9909 (Harsh Mattoo)]

Hi Blue Robotics,
I have a question, how many blueboats can be operated comfortably with one Basestation router provided that each blueboat has its on master PC/Laptop to control it. I’ve tried with 6 Blueboats ( operated by 6 individual PCs) and I had really unstable connection. What do you think the limit is?

[EliotBR (Eliot)]

Hi @harshmattoo9909,

@harshmattoo9909

how many blueboats can be operated comfortably with one Basestation router

This is an interesting question, and I’m not sure we’ve meaningfully tested it - I’ve asked internally to see if we can provide any existing guidance.

That said, from a pure signals perspective it would depend on how well the communication with each vehicle can be isolated (e.g. in frequency and/or time), along with how much data each connection requires.

@harshmattoo9909

each blueboat has its on master PC/Laptop to control it.

Is there a reason for this requirement?

In the unlikely case where the bandwidth capacity of a computer is the limiting factor for communication additional computers may help somewhat, but otherwise it’s likely to create more noise in the area, which could make things worse.

It also seems significantly less convenient than just connecting to multiple vehicles from a single computer on separate ports, especially since BlueBoat control is often high level location-/mission-based rather than using a joystick.

[EliotBR (Eliot)]

@EliotBR

I’ve asked internally to see if we can provide any existing guidance.

Following up, we have apparently done some testing with a single control station computer controlling 4 BlueBoats through 1 BaseStation. I don’t believe we’ve tested beyond that (e.g. to find a specific failure threshold).

Note that connecting multiple BlueBoats does require configuring them to each

@tony-white

… have a different IP, mikrotik IP, and vehicleID parameter so they don’t get conflicts.

In terms of control/interfacing,

@tony-white

QGroundControl has a drop down to let you pick between each individual vehicle for control, but all are displayed on the map at once.

For limiting factors:

1. Every boat needs to be within range of the BaseStation to be controlled
   • This depends on the antenna setup, both in terms of sensitivity and occlusions
   • In future one could envisage a substantial range increase for a fleet through some kind of mesh networking (likely at the expense of some additional latency)
   • It is also possible to bypass the BaseStation with some form of internet-based control (e.g. using a cellular modem or Starlink setup), although that does understandably add some cost and latency
2. The connection data rates may overload the BaseStation capabilities
   • This would likely take many vehicles for normal control communication, but could happen with fewer if they’re sending additional network traffic (e.g. sonar/video data)