Blueboat Basestation Capabilities

Blue Robotics Vehicles BlueBoat
1

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?

2

Hi @harshmattoo9909,

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.

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.

3

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

In terms of control/interfacing,

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)
4

Hey Eliot/Tony,

Operating more than one vessel from one BaseStation is something that I’m interested in exploring. Surveying at high tides over reefs means we’re really time-limited, so being able to operate more than one Blueboat in those situations would be really beneficial.

Would this be a question of setting up a separate IP for each Blueboat? And then there’s automatically a drop-down menu in Qgroundcontrol? How does the controller interact in those situations, you only have control when you’ve selected the corresponding Blueboat in the interface?

5

Hi @Vincent
Besides changing the IP address of the second BlueBoat’s Mikrotik radio and Raspberry Pi (in mikrotik interface and BlueOS, respectively), you’ll also need to change the SYSID_THISMAV parameter to a different number. This number is what will be selectable from the drop-down in QGC. I like to increase the IP values by 10, so the second boat will have an IP of 192.168.2.12, and its radio 192.168.2.14.

You only have control of the selected vehicle based on which is selected, but you’ll be able to see both on the map, and it is quick to switch between them!

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