Homebuilt ROVs Forum

500' of Cat-5 for ROV control and also return video feed. Our power is on-board batteries.

Marcus, you won't see an increase in the amperage on the output side of your converter. It will regulate the voltage, but not increase the output amerage. The 90% effeciancy is an indication of how much power is used (and wasted) by the converter itself, just to do it's job. To get an increase in am...

The heat produced from a MOSFET will depend on the amperage load of your motor. If your amperage load is just a few amps I doubt that you will have much heat. MOSFET's are very effiecient and produce far less heat than a transistor. I use IRF5305 (55v 31amp) MOSFET's on my circuitboards. The motors ...

If you're using a 120/12v DC power supply, the output may just be a little dirty. Check the AC voltage level at your camera connection. A good clean DC output should only show just a couple of AC millivolts. Putting a capacitor near the camera connection should clean it up if it's dirty.

The PVC tube I use on my ROV is larger than yours @ 12" in diameter, and all of my circuit boards are approximately 2" wide, by 6" long, but this might still work for you. What I did was to glue two smaller 3/8" PVC pipes along the inside length of the main tube, one on each side...

The depth sensor is a pressure sensor with 0-5 volts output. It's coupled to a PIC Processor's analog input and converted to feet in the software. I can get the actual part number for the sensor if your looking at using one.

I'm communicating using RS232 with a 16F877 Pic Processor in our ROV on 500' of Cat-5 cable and it's working fine. I'm using a laptop that's running MS Windows on the other end.

The reed switch idea is a great idea. Another way is to leave the switch mounted inside the sealed compartment and drill and thread a hole that fits a 1/2" PVC male threaded plug in the compartment directly over a toggle or slide switch. Take the plug out and use a screwdriver to flip the switc...

Hi. Just curious, have you taken an amperage load reading on your batteries while your ROV is descending, to determine just how much of the batteries are being used up? We have 6 small sealed lead acid batteries on board our ROV and I have assended/descended the ROV to 80-100 feet many times during ...

Great video and it looked like the ROV performed very well. Nice job!