How to make a GPS for a Radio Controlled Sailboat?

Onboard GPS units allow you to track the position, speed and heading of your RC boats in real time while sailing.

To take full advantage of it, it is important to use a speed display , in order to view live data and replay your sessions afterwards to analyze your performance.

GPS pour voilier radio commandé

What components are needed?

It is necessary to connect an ESP32 controller. We are using the Atom S3 Lite from M5Stack ($7.50).

To power it, we're choosing a 3.7V Lipo battery for €12 and an Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 Charger component for €31, which can charge the Lipo battery with a USB port and boost the voltage to 5V to power the Atom S3.

To retrieve the GPS coordinates of the boat's location, we use a GPS module that plugs into the Atom S3 lite. This is the GPS Base v2 module for $10.

You also need a Grove cable to connect the Adafruit charger to the Atom Lite module, $4 for 10 cables:

In summary: