Circumnavigation or bust: The OSS data stack powering a droneship’s journey around the world
Wednesday, May 7
5:00 PM
15 mins
Main Stage
About this session
Embark on an extraordinary journey with Project Bob, spacecraft engineer Andrew McCalip’s plan to send a 14-foot drone boat on a record-breaking 25,000-mile circumnavigation of the globe, leveraging open source technologies like Grafana and Tailscale to achieve seamless connectivity and real-time data monitoring.
Andrew — known for his public replication attempts of the LK-99 material, a copper-doped lead-oxyapatite once hypothesized as a room-temperature superconductor — brings his innovative spirit to this maritime challenge. In this session, he will dive into the hardware design, the requirements for creating a self-sustaining, autonomous drone, and the use of open source tools to build a robust and reliable data stack to monitor and maintain connectivity throughout the journey. With the global connectivity of Starlink, people will be able to watch the journey live through four onboard cameras and a public Grafana dashboard map.
Grafana enables real-time insights through detailed dashboards, providing critical telemetry and environmental data that keep the project on track. Tailscale ensures secure and seamless networking, allowing the drone to connect with systems across the globe as if they were on the same local network — even in the most remote parts of the ocean. With Project Bob, Andrew demonstrates the power of open source tools in tackling ambitious, real-world engineering challenges.
