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I am building the Hobby Boss 1/200th scale model of the Japanese pre-dreadnought battleship Mikasa.

My idea is to create the control systems myself using off the shelf Arduino components, this presents some challenges with when to install the electronics in the timeline of building a plastic model kit.

I have created this prototype frame on the laser cutter and I’ll fit the electronics into it and get the Arduino code working and tested before it goes into the kit. Well, that’s the idea.

The bread board in the foreground has a digital compass and is displaying the heading. The display has a blank line but thats just an interaction between the display refresh rate and the shutter speed on my camera phone.

The required heading and the direction each of the two main guns should be pointing at is set using the potentiometers and displayed. Originally I had three servos connected which represented turning the rudder and and the two main guns to the requested bearing.

The two servos turning the main guns can be seen poking out of the deck of the prototype and the rudder (rather un-scale!) is hanging off the back of the model.

At the top of the picture you can see two breadboards each with an Arduino and 2.4Ghz transceivers. These two breadboards talk to each other two way over distances suitable for the model boat. I haven’t tested them over water yet but there are more expensive transceiver units available so I can upgrade as necessary.

On the right are the electronics that I have to fit in the prototype and on the left with the gears are the actual geared stepper motors that I will use on the guns in the 200th scale model.