Raspberry Pi Pico for boat projects

So our Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller kit arrived today. We have been through a first video tutorial which has got us to connect it to my laptop, download MicroPython and Thonny. Then when wrote a little program to make the LED flash.
The kit comes with over 450 items and will allow a lot of experiments and learning so that we can be ready to build real things that are useful and practical.

The video series for the kit starts with this one:

We have quite a few projects in mind that will be useful for Sustainable Sailing.

The first fits with the earlier post on Compost Toilets and our own deadline to get composting working on the boat. We think that it might be possible to achieve small volume, hot composting of the dry solid toilet without needing to do the "traditional" composting that we have neither space nor time for.

For us to have a chance of achieving Humanure Composting in a way that will fit on our, not very spacious, Rival 38, we are going to have to do the composting in a very specific and controlled way. That will mean an insulated box with controlled airflow and moisture to achieve specific temperatures.

So our first "real" task with the Pico is to monitor and control our composting container. So we might need to control fans and/or water supply which we hope will allow us to keep the temperature within the optimum range to compost very fast without going too high and killing the composting microbes.

It is going to take a while to get there. So one of the tasks on the way will be to create the composting box. This video has given us some ideas:

This might well not work, however, we think it is worth trying. If we are able to achieve convenient humanure composting with a record of the temperatures showing that it meets EPA Class A standards then we have something that can transform the impact of sailing in sensitive areas. Not just reducing the impact of human waste but turning it into a positive - safe soil improvment.