RCC student Michael Elliott builds remote-controlled boat
“Vroom, vroom, vroom,” is what you hear once Michael Elliott places his made from scratch, remote-controlled boat in the pond located on campus.
Fellow students could be heard cheering him on as they see the boat take off.
“It can probably go about 70 mph, just because of the weight and the power distribution,” said Elliott.
And from the sound of it, the boat was traveling at maximum speeds, creating a great deal of engine noise as Elliott was revving up the motor.
Elliott is a dually enrolled student at RCC and the RCC Early College, taking classes in the Industrial Systems program. He designed the boat as part of his capstone project for the Industrial Technologies class.
“Everybody was doing their own thing, Allan designed a drone, another guy created a remote-controlled car, and I kind of wanted to keep it going and do a boat,” said Elliott.
Seeing the boat in action looked like a miniature version of a speed boat, like something that you would see out on the ocean. As the remote-controlled boat cruised around, it sent crashing waves, rippling water throughout the pond.
During the test run, the boat stopped working after several successful runs up and down the pond, but as Elliott stated, “It’s an easy fix.”
“I’ve had some problems with that in the past, just with it getting wet, it’s hard to seal up…When I turned it around a while ago, I got water inside the internals. It isn’t a big deal because everything is waterproof,” said Elliott.
Elliot says that once water gets inside, it causes the speed controller, which contains fans, to stop running.
“I believe his charge controller coming from the battery to the receiver actually got wet and when it did, it stopped it from turning left initially and now it won’t move,” said Matthew McKnight, the instructor for the class at RCC
“It is a really great project and a great design,” said McKnight. “Throughout the build, he has been sending me videos of how it works and all, and I’ve seen it work in two or three different ponds, as well as this one.”
Instructor Matthew McKnight holds the controller of the boat his student, Michael Elliott built.
Once the boat was recovered from the pond, Elliott was able to discover the root problem.
“I unplugged it and re-did it. I had a lost connection because it was wet, and now we will see if it will dry out and continue to work some,” said Elliott. “I got in over my head for sure, it was definitely a difficult process but I have made it work.”
Elliott says that even though he experienced trouble with the boat this morning, it is yet another opportunity for a lesson learned.
“I’ve run across a lot of problems along the way, this is just one more that I can learn from and fix and make it even better,” Elliott said. “I’ve had a lot of testing that I’ve done on it and I’ve fixed a lot of problems, so this morning might not have turned out so well, but I’ve got it right now, it just needs a little bit of a tune-up, a few things can be changed to improve it and make it better.”
McKnight says that learning how to troubleshoot is one of the primary purposes of the class.
“Students learn how to build things and they test it out to see how it works, along the way they may need to troubleshoot, and that’s a part of this class, figuring out what the problems are and how to fix something so that it continues to work.”
On the next test run, Elliott says he will have solved all the issues from today, and have an even better remote-controlled boat that can go at high-speed in whatever pond, river, or stream he chooses to place it in.
And he will have a keepsake from his time at RCC that will always be a reminder of what you can accomplish if you just put your mind to it. It will most likely also serve as a good conversation starter too, as he heads off to NC State or Texas A&M, two universities he has expressed interest in attending after he graduates with both his high school diploma and associate’s degree.
