From Boing Boing:
"In the New York Times today, Brian Lam (formerly of Gizmodo, now the creator of Scuttlefish and Wirecutter) writes about OpenROV, a low-cost submarine designed to be an affordable tool for "curious students and amateurs, as well as provide a highly valuable shallow water tool for explorers and scientists."
This month, NASA engineer Eric Stackpole hiked to a spot in Trinity County, east of California’s rough Bigfoot country. Nestled at the base of a hill of loose rock, peppered by red and purple wildflowers, is Hall City Cave. For part of the winter the cave is infested with large spiders, but is mostly flooded year-round. Locals whisper the cave’s deep pools hold a cache of stolen gold, but Mr. Stackpole isn’t here to look for treasure.
He had, under his arm, what might appear to be a clunky toy blue submarine about the size of a lunchbox. The machine is the latest prototype of the OpenROV–an open-source, remotely operated vehicle that could map the cave in 3D using software from Autodesk and collect water in places too tight for a diver to go. It could change the future of ocean exploration. For now, it is exploring caves because it can only go down 100 meters. But it holds promise because it is cheap, links to a laptop, and is available to a large number of researchers for experimentation. Indeed, the OpenROV team hopes to start taking orders for OpenROV kits on the crowd sourced project site, Kickstarter. Going for $750, the kits include laser cut plastic parts and all the electronics necessary to build an OpenROV. (Users will have to bring their own laptops to view the onboard video feed and control the machine. They’ll also have to supply their own C-cell batteries which power the sub.) The subs are expected to be available by the end of summer.
Read the full story here, and check out the awesome video Brian shot, here."
Comments
Jan: That's the hope, but unfortunately digitizing the video on the Beagle Bone board at the moment is leading to ~1 second latency, which makes navigation very difficult. We'll see if they can crack that. Otherwise, they'll have to return to analog video, which is what most ROVs use.
IMU/AHRS/INS data is used in AUVs although waterproofing cameras and thrusters is what normally stalls ROV projects.
My go-to waterproof camera is epoxy and a dive light. The video output and power hull penetration is a path of ingress for water.
I like hose barb fittings and aquarium hose as a solution to that.
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100346775/h_d2/ProductDispl...
I've had some success with drilling the carriage bolts on these test plugs and then epoxy potting my wire penetrations. Water under pressure can penetrate some types of wire insulation so for reliable operation that has to be accounted for. I've heard of epoxy up to a terminated connector, or simply waterproof cable.
If all you have inside is a $10 camera from chinavasion and a $20 Arduino Pro Mini you don't have much to lose if it takes on water.
For prototyping hot melt glue is a passable substitute for epoxy. It's less permanent, and works surprisingly well.
I've got some ESCs I coated in Automotive grade RTV compound that still work fine after a couple hours of shallow water operation. Acetic acid is supposed to corrode circuits so your mileage may vary. AKA the cheaper the better. I haven't perfected waterproof lipoly so powered tether is the only thing I can recommend.
On the topic of waterproof lipoly:
I'll say that same test plug carriage bolt looks like a battery terminal on the end of some schedule 40 pipe if you can solder the battery leads to it. I found some brass bolts at West Marine I've done that to.
I've heard of lithium poly running at ambient in mineral oil but I have no personal experience with the matter to make such a recommendation. What experiments I have done have lead me to believe that the cells are less likely to trap air and cause headaches with the heat shrink removed. Stripped to PCB and pouches is what I've been working on.
Going to try dipping in Plastidip this week and see if the solvent does anything nasty to them. Short of doing a long term recharge/discharge test, I'll only be able to recognize immediate failure.
yea your right. I was way over thinking it.
Couldn't you use the APM board and connect to the usb and basically manuver with a joystick since you would have to have cables coming from the sub. Then you could have your video and everything. I don't plan on going to deep maybe 30 ft. Just for fun.
I have motors and everything else lying around and could be fun to use my APM1 for more stuff.
Would it be possible to to start a group for the people that would like to build there own. Surely getting the APM1 set to do what you need couldn't be to tough. But I am not a programmer so we would dev team to help out.
From the video, "I always fail my way to success."
Great quote, that describes DIY in a nutshell.
Chris, I met Craig for about 20 min at Maker Faire and before long was fascinated watching video from his adventures in the deep sea hydrothermal vents. Pretty amazing guy to have as part of the team.
We had the OpenROV team down to 3D Robotics in San Diego to discuss possible collaboration. Craig Elder, our head of software engineering, is a ROV expert (he came to us from Seabotix), so subs are definitely in our future. Right now the OpenROV team want to try making the first few themselves, but if this takes off we'll see if it makes sense for us to make them at 3DR.
I have a lake nearby. I'm totally onboard for ArduSub and will help port it. I've signed up for their kit
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