Yamirider

Evening all, looking for some experience from those who may have built a RC boat a little out of the norm using some Drone Transmitter/Receivers and Controllers. Based in Queensland Australia and enjoy my fishing. Have been using a Phantom 3 with bait dropper to fly larger shark fishing baits out much further than they could be cast (Think 6-8Oz lead weight and 30CM long whole bait fish). Works a treat during the day on the remote 4WD accessible beaches I fish but they're at least a couple of hours away. The closer to home marks I regularly fish are under the approach of an international airport so designated no fly zone and flanked by houses with locals who can be a little touchy about drones zipping about. Here's where the idea of a RC boat comes in. No previous RC build experience however as an engineer with controls systems experience, the project doesn't daunt me, its more drawing on your collective experience of what's available, what does and doesn't work, and what's value for money in the RC world.

As a first poster, cant post links to potential hardware below sorry so named them in Bold/Italics

Spotted the Joysway Surfer which is kind of what I have in mind capability wise but no longer/easily available.

Joysway Surfer RC Boat

Broad outline from a bit of googling below but happy to be guided to better options:

Hull: Looking 1-1.5m Fibreglass Construction. Speedboat type affair. Got a 1.3m one on watch locally with motor and some RC gear for not a lot of money ($250 AUD I may grab to tinker with) and a friend has a self built boat around the same size which is currently outfitted with a ridiculous 2T grass strimmer engine, expansion chamber and jet drive that he's offered to me for free if i can put it to good use. Would be looking at electric motor drive and batteries on whatever I used. Not really looking at motors/motor drivers yet as they will be sized to suit craft.

Transmitter/Receiver: Looking at a Drone type affair that can handle a GPS throughput from a controller with GPS telemetry capability. Will be fishing at night over local reefs at a typical range of 250m but up to 500m from shore. Whilst I'll outfit the boat with a pair of Red/Green navigation lights so judge location and orientation at distance in the dark, having a GPS map available should I loose track would be a lifesaver. Ability to integrate a camera and stream video would be cool too.

Spotted these if anybody has experience or can suggest a better setup:

Skydroid T12 Transmitter
Skydroid H12 Transmitter
Skydroid R12 Receiver

Controller: From an controller perspective, a controller that allows easy boat setup. A couple of hours on google shows people using Ardupilot compatible devices such as the Radiolink Pixhawk devices. Requirements would be enough for boat control (motor, rudder etc) and at least a digital output to trigger a bait release mechanism. The ability to integrate a GPS based return to home function would be really cool. In summer, we get Tuna around 250-500m off shore. Too far to cast but the ability to also use the boat to toll a lure parallel to the beach then (once hooked and released from the boat) return it to shore doing 90% of the retrieval would be a great capability.

Radiolink Pixhawk
SE100 GPS for Pixhawk

Getting further ahead, would be cool to integrate a wireless sounder into the boat to give depth soundings of what's below it:

Toslon TF520

Initial Impressions? Well far of the mark or a feasible side project?

Superdad3d

Did you get anywhere with this? I was looking at the Joysway Fishing surfer as well but it seems like most owners feel that it is underpowered and the hull is not very strong from what I’ve read on their Facebook group. I’ve built plenty of racing/freestyle drones and would probably end up upgrading the motors and ESC’s as soon as I bought it, so I’m thinking about going the DIY route as well.