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Makani source code released

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Re: Makani source code released

#41

Post by tobinfricke »

msoad wrote: post #8

Why this failed? I would love to learn more if anyone has more insider knowledge

> Why this failed?

Well, I think the main TLDR is that it would require significant additional investment to reach MVP. Also- the energy sector lacks the huge margins of the tech sector. Renewables have long been subject to a boom-bust cycle driven by the prevailing price of energy.

Our released technical report "The Energy Kite" is intended to help answer this question, and to explain what we would do if we had the opportunity to continue our work. Check it out here: https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Maka...

One major learning is that it ultimately appeared to us that crosswind kite power currently offers little benefit over traditional horizontal axis wind turbines for onshore applications, except perhaps niche applications such as small-scale generation allowing rapid deployment. There may still be a viable opportunity for large-scale crosswind kite power in the deepwater offshore environment. In that environment, conventional wind requires huge floating platforms to deal with the overturning moment arising from the turbine drag acting at the top of the tower. In crosswind kite power, only a small buoy is required to support the tether tension.

Finally, the M600 failed to meet its performance specification (the "power curve" which shows how power generation scales with wind speed). The reasons for this are detailed in the technical report (starting on page 231 of the above link). (We designed a follow-on system called MX2 which we believe would meet its performance objectives but the project was cancelled before it was built.)

Re: Makani source code released

#42

Post by greesil »

winrid wrote: post #33

Some of the code for the tools is fun to read https://github.com/google/makani/blob/c421e4497dd09c86b01725... This is not proper Java, at all. But it's what a lot of Java code looks like because it's a good choice for inexperienced devs or rushed projects.

According to GitHub this project is less than 3% Java. It's mostly C++, C, and Python

Re: Makani source code released

#45

Post by tobinfricke »

hlandau wrote: post #10

Any chance on board schematics, or even just some basic block diagram of the avionics hardware? It's hard to understand this firmware without having any idea what it ran on.

Ask away and I'll tell you what I can. :-)

You'll find some description here (but no schematics): https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Maka...

Re: Makani source code released

#47

Post by brandmeyer »

tobinfricke wrote: post #38
brandmeyer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, that's totally true. Just for one example: I.MX, TMS570, and ethernet of all things are all very expensive and extravagant solutions for the application. Those decisions are only supportable if you can hide the cost behind the price tag of a system the size of Makani (preferably much larger). Almost anyone else would be looking at Cortex-M and CAN bus and be quite satisfied with those selections.

The use of those processors and ethernet were not major cost drivers. There's a very nice technical document describing the network topology titled "A Low-Cost Fiber Optic Avionics Network for Energy Kites" in the collection of technical documents: https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Maka...

At this scale, no of course not. But at 100 kW or 10 kW? Remember that the argument is about applicability to other kite energy systems. Margins get very thin when power electronics costs only 0.03 USD/watt for the entire system. It gets harder to hide signal processing costs as the size of the system decreases.

Re: Makani source code released

#48

Post by jlgaddis »

From https://x.company/projects/makani/:

> In 2020 Makani’s journey as a company came to an end [0]. To share the lessons and insights the Makani team gained from their 13 year journey developing an entirely new kind of wind energy technology, the team created The Energy Kite Collection, a portfolio of resources including a technical report, Makani’s entire avionics, flight controls and simulation code repositories [1], flight logs [2] for every crosswind flight of the M600 prototype, technical videos [3], a new simulation tool called KiteFAST [4] created with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and a non-assertion pledge [5] for the free use of Makani’s worldwide patent portfolio.

I just wanna say that this -- all of it, the entire paragraph! -- is absolutely amazing (well, except for the end of the company, of course).

---

[0]: https://blog.x.company/a-long-and-windy-road-f8e09d02c9e1

[1]: https://github.com/google/makani

[2]: https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/bigquer...

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7og_3Jqea4VRCZmMNK4L...

[4]: https://github.com/rafmudaf/openfast/tree/kitefast

[5]: https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Maka...

Re: Makani source code released

#50

Post by UncleOxidant »

tobinfricke wrote: post #39
Xorlev wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does code released have to have commercial applicability to other organizations to be relevant? It seems like a post-mortem code dump.

We hope that others find the code useful. There are a lot of goodies in there. A full-fledged flight simulator that could be used to simulate a variety of physical systems. A Kalman-filter-based state estimator. Math libraries. Firmware to run high performance electric motors. We also understand that it's typically very hard to adapt and re-use other people's code, especially when it's no longer actively supported. A…

Hopefully someone can use it and realize the kite power dream someday. Right now funding in this space is tough especially, it seems, after Google stopped funding Makani. We used to be able to say "Look, Google is funding this kind of thing" - it lent a certain legitimacy, but now potential funders seem to be nervous about Google dropping the funding.
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