Brian testing the Doomsday device

This is Brian's autopilot, specifically designed for an ultra light displacement boats. These are sports boat that are rather finicky. It is tough to drive them because they are super reactive, to the simplest wave, the simplest puff, etc...That's what makes them go fast, they will take advantage of every single bit of extra power you give it, and do so immediately.

This is a real challenge for an autopilot, particularly if you're trying to push the boat a little bit in a single handed race AND if you want to conserve as much power as possible.

The other thing that I love in this autopilot is the User Interface. My NKE works great and clearly has decades of R&D in it (it is the same pilot that is used for boats along the minitransat)

The problem is that it has become very complex and there is about a million settings. I only know how to change the gain based on conditions but that's not really optimized.

This AP has 'learned' Elise' modus operandi...and it has three buttons: ON/OFF, RIGHT, LEFT. And short or long push can get it to tack/gybe Vs just a couple of degrees in that direction. And yes, it doesn't have the bells and whistles as the NKE (like wind mode, compass mode, etc...) but once you give it a course, it sure steers superbly to it.