Electronics Layout

Began the layout of the electronics this morning.   If I'm going to change to a dive plane arrangement, batteries will probably have to go into the main tube, but here's the idea on the original.

Dive planes ?

I thought of something today....   Instead of "regular thrusters" for the rov, what if it had the motors installed on dive planes that rotated up or down with whatever motion was necessary in order to point the prop in the right direction?   

I.e.....  To descend, the code rotates the servo that controls the dive plane do that the thruster props are pointed up at a 45* angle.... That force would push the rov down into the water... Opposite for up, and for forward the dive planes would be at 0*.  For reverse the motors would spin in reverse on the same dive planes, and also the dive planes would have to work in reverse.....     Too cool..

Getting to work on this design Asap.

Other remote controlled ideas

Pondering this today, in speaking with family...

How about a tank tredded metal detector with gps mapping?    Could be autonomous unit like a Rumba vacuum you put down on the sand, and it does preprogrammed sweeps of the beaches...  A speaker on board could blare out as it finds something, or even a return-to-gps-site feature...

Or, a tow behind sonar with a tether to the boat towing it, to show a map of what's under the water.   Cool huh?

More pondering to come...

Design Plans

OK so let's get back to this "Should I do a top-side buoy or not" thing.

I'm thinking about initial plans to include just a long tether to the ROV.   

ROV Hull - Long 4" cylinder with cameras fore and aft, with two "runners" along the side, which will house LED lights in the front, batteries in the middle, and thrusters in the rear.  Two skids will attach to the bottom of these outriggers, and there you have it - an ROV.

Very crude whiteboard drawing, but this is the concept.
Central tube houses all the brains, and the fore/aft cams.
Outriggers support it on the bed of the water body with
Steel feet / structures.   

Just not sure on how to do the up / down thrusters.  Thinking about doing angled motors underneath the ROV, so that it's not "straight up and down" but up and down at an angle.

Time will tell.   Also, the connections between main tube and outriggers will have to be solid in some fashion.   I'm going for the "sea ray" look...

Found the perfect software

In my endless research for this project, I found the "ROV-Suite".

There's a program that runs on a PC, called Monterey.   They're up to version 4.0, and it's downloadable, so I grabbed it and it works!   It supposedly supports USB joysticks, so I'm attempting to get the xbox 360 controllers working with my PC.

If that all works, there's another program they have called "Bottomside" which runs inside the ROV platform on an Arduino microcontroller.    You install the code there, connect together via ethernet tether, and voila!  You have communication based on a network connection.

Pieces and Parts (Concepts first!)

I've been sifting through every ROV page on the internet - when I "came up with this idea", I thought it'd be few and far between, but the amount of pages out there on homebuilt ROVs is insane.  Information overload for sure.

I've come to a design crossroads.   I originally planned on doing a 500 foot tether, with multiple cables connected so I could just do relay controlled thrusters, passing power down through the same tether.  As I considered that, and it's not a horrible idea by any means, I grew weary of multiple connections going bad and leaving my ROV sitting on the bottom of the (ocean,lake,stream,pond,pool,bathtub) to die a horrible, rusty death.

Plan 1:   Buoy "Platform" on the surface, with 100 foot tether to the ROV, and tether to shore.  Kind of a relay station idea.   I liked this idea, but again, too much old school electronics, and I really don't want to drag huge lead acid batteries with me everywhere.

So here's the real plan;

Buoy platform on the surface, with 100 foot tether to the ROV, but with wireless network connections on a small antenna pole.

Buoy Contents

• Battery System (NiMH ?  LIPO? )  Haven't decided here, because LIPO is hazardous near water...  extermely so...
• Battery Charger port behind weather protected cover.
• Raspberry Pi on board for tech measurement, and app connection to shore
• Mikrotik HomeAP running in AP mode (connection to shore)  Might possible change this out to support a connection further from shore
• TPLink Powerline Ethernet with guts ripped out (power it via battery, 3.3v) and will connect to tether to 
• Massive flotation.   Positive Buoancy
• Surface to Air protection ?   hah.  Nah, that's a different day.
• Beacon light.
• 100' of Cat5e, gel-filled, attached.

ROV Platform Contents

• Battery system, definitely NiMH, with charging system, mounted inside pvc tube filled with mineral oil.   This will avoid leakage at pressure, and also protect batteries from corrosion and (salt) water leaks.
• Mikrotik HomeAP on board as the network controller / switch.   5 network ports, 1 for uplink, 4 for devices on board.   It also has WiFi built in, and I was thinking of connecting the PI's to it via WiFi.
• Raspberry Pi on board for motor control and possibly cameras.  That might mean three PIs.  
• Some sort of network camera(s) - would like front / rear.
• Neutrally Byuoyant so as to be able to move up / down all around easily.
• Torpedoes on board.  OK, different day still.
• LED Light platform

ROV Structure

• Need two 3" PVC arms for the battery storage.
• Need central (4"?) PVC for the guts / motor control, etc.
• Bilge pumps serve as motors - I thought I was going to stick to the jet boat design, but to save amperage, and only use 3 motors, they have to be dual function.   So, I'll break them apart, and adapt props to the shafts like everyone else does.
• Some sort of rope, or stronger tether needs to connect Buoy to ROV, so if we had to we could yank it up by something sturdy instead of yanking on the cat5

That's all I can write for now, but I'll continue with more thoughts later.

Introduction

What's a Homebuilt ROV ?   To answer that question, let's start with "What's an ROV?!" in the first place.   

ROV = Remote Operating Vehicle.   Fancy words for a submarine "Drone", or fly-by-wire operated submarine.

I'll take the words of others to explain.  

From http://www.seaviewsystems.com/questions/what-is-an-rov/

Using a series of propellors, ROVs are unoccupied, highly maneuverable underwater robots operated by a person on the surface.  An “umbilical” cable carries power and and control signals to the vehicle and video, status and other sensory data back to the operators. 

Most ROVs are equipped with at least one video camera and lights. Additional equipment may include one or more sonars, a stills camera, a manipulator or cutting arm and a wide range of sampling options.

We can BUILD these ?   Of course!   People have been building remotely operated vehicles for decades.   The most recent trend is quadcopters, or drones.   I've got a couple, and I really enjoy flying them, but the age old problem rears its ugly head from time to time, and that's wrecking them at high speeds...   I wanted something to do that was reliable every time and still provided us some enjoyment.

So, I looked to the waters.   I was thinking RC Boats, but they can get out of range, flip over, smash into things - basically the whole RC Airplane thing but on water.  No thanks.

I looked at submarines.   Prebuilt subs were very expensive, and can only go as far down as they can tow an antenna, because wireless doesn't work underwater.  So, that was out.

And then, I came across ROV's.   There are a TON of home-built sites on the Interwebs, and following one of their examples would end up in a craft that was more than acceptable. But I wanted to put my own spin on things.

There are many designs out there, and they all have one thing in common, and that's go underwater, roam around, take pictures, and come back up.   Undamaged.  Hopefully.

Let's see how this will work.   Follow us as we design and prototype an ROV, and then get it in the water and test and refine.