Planned for Kickstarter · April 2027
The SubCommander Commander works both ballast tanks and the dive planes, holds depth and trim, and brings the boat up when something goes wrong. You set it up from a phone, on a page the boat serves itself. Its firmware source will be published in full.
Designed and rule-checked. Firmware run on a simulated boat. Not yet built. A hand-wired prototype comes next.
A 3D model made from the board's manufacturing files, with simple blocks for the parts. Not a photograph: no board has been built yet.
The range
One board is planned for the campaign. Two more are designed and wait their turn.
80 × 52 mm · 8 radio channels · Kickstarter, April 2027
Two piston tanks, both sets of planes, depth and pitch regulators, leak and battery watch, an emergency gas blow, lights and two torpedo releases. Built on a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W.
Coming later · 51 × 31 mm · 3 radio channels
The small one, for boats with one ballast pump that runs both ways. Two plane servos, depth and pitch regulators, and a failsafe for lost signal and for going too deep.
Coming later · 40 MHz receiver · 34 channels
A 40 MHz FM receiver with no receiver crystals to change. A synthesiser takes the crystal's place and the channel is picked on the phone. The Commander has the connector for it.
The pictures are 3D models made from the board files, not photographs. Postage is extra. The planned pledge levels.
Setup
The Commander makes its own Wi-Fi network. Join it, open 192.168.4.1 in the phone's browser, and the setup page is there.
Wi-Fi does not pass through water, so the page is for the bench and the surface. Under water the boat is driven by your radio set, as it always was.
These are pictures of the real setup page, served by the board's own firmware running on a computer against a simulated boat. No hardware was involved.
Failsafe
A submarine that loses its radio link is out of sight as well as out of reach. The Commander watches for trouble and acts on it without being told.
Drives both tanks empty and puts the front planes to full rise. The rear planes go on holding the boat level.
The same emergency surfacing.
The same emergency surfacing.
Two probes, forward and aft, with a trip level you set. Surfaces, and flashes a code that says which end is wet.
Warns first, with the boat still fully under control. Surfaces at the cut-off voltage.
Opens a gas-cylinder valve by itself, once, after a delay you set. You can also blow from a switch on the transmitter.
A watchdog restarts it after two seconds. The power stays on meanwhile.
Switches itself off after ten minutes with no radio and no phone. The time can be changed.
Loss of signal is detected when the receiver stops sending servo pulses. A receiver that keeps sending them needs its own failsafe positions set to bring the boat up. More in the questions.
Source available
The Commander's firmware and its setup page will be published in full when the campaign opens. You can read exactly what your boat's controller does, change it, and load your own version.
The controller itself is a stock Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W, soldered to the board. It is not locked in any way.
The source is finished and will be published with the campaign. The licence it is published under will be stated with it.
Why Kickstarter
The model-submarine hobby is small, and a first batch of boards costs real money before the first one is sold. A campaign answers the one question that matters: are there enough of you?
The planned goal is £4,000. If pledges do not reach it, nobody is charged and no boards are made.
Kickstarter asks hardware projects to show a working prototype. So do we. The campaign opens only when a real Commander has run a real boat under water, on film.
Each board will be assembled by hand in the UK and tested on a rig before it is posted.
Where it stands
The Commander exists as a design, not as hardware. Here is what has been done and what has not.
Nothing will be offered until a Commander has been built, run on the bench and tried in the water. The dates are a plan, and every one of them moves if the trials find faults.
Join the launch list. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You get an email when the date is set and another the day the campaign opens, in time for the early-bird pledges.