Homebuilt ROVs Forum

The tether consists of three separate cables, on 18-2 for the AC, one mini coax for the video, and one 22guage for the RF transmission. It's roughly 330ft long and only has buoyancy on the 100ft closest to the ROV. The Buoyancy material is called "backer rod" available at home improvement/...

Sorry for the delay everybody, let me see if I can answer all the questions, and give an update. The method of getting the power to the ROV via 120 feed is explained above, but to recap, 12VDC batteries on the boat -> off the shelf Inverter to 120VAC -> down the tether to the ROV -> switch mode elec...

I found something interesting in eBay today and thought I'd share. In case you haven't come across them yet...brushless submersible circulating pumps. I wonder how these would work? No depth rating on them, but then again the bilge pumps weren't designed for more that a foot or so either ;) http://c...

The cable fittings into the main enclosure are just standard cable glands, the things with the rubber seal and the plastic or steel nut that crimps down on the cable. I have a few pics of the ROV in the section "your ROV projects section" if you want to see what it looks like, should be ab...

Here's some recent footage of me shooting for the 300ft mark with my ROV in Lake Mead, NV. Two dives here, one which was a success to 127ft, and the second was a shot towards my 300ft goal at 280ft. See what happens...

I can attest to the Johnson bilge pumps running leak free at 120ft. I don't know how long they can stand it, but so far they've got about 30min run time at that depth. Fresh water, if that makes any difference in your consideration.

So here's video of my last attempt out at the lake, made it to 120ft and had a few issues. Luckily, all of them are easily correctable and the important parts worked great. RF transmission, bilge pump motors, and camera and main housings survived. The first problem I had was flooding of the PVC hull...

Welcome to the forum and congrats on finally getting to put your ideas in motion. I know the feeling, I wanted to build one for a long time as well and these days two things came together to make it happen for me. Technology got cheaper and more available and that was met with me having extra cash t...

I'm going to make to 300ft one way or another :) The Camera housing is an ABS plumbing coupler, reinforced dome from the security camera's housing and a rubber plumbing coupler cut down to put it together. One thing that seems to be working great for sealing things, especially rubber things is Mercr...

Hi Trogdor, Yes, RF from an RC controller will travel through the water with a "helper" wire. My ROV is proof and it made it to 70ft. I have a small gauge wire tied to the receiver antenna on the ROV which run up the tether with an end to connect with an alligator clip to the controller. H...