Homebuilt ROVs Forum

Awesome! I can not wait to see the rest.

Firstly, welcome to the forum! The first thing you will need to decide is what the intended purpose of your ROV will be. There is no one 'best' thruster configuration, only the best configuration for your application. For instance, if you want to build a small observation-class ROV primarily for loo...

Wow, amazing job! You have crafted a very polished final product. May I ask what camera took the video's you posted? Was it the board camera you mentioned, or something else? Awesome job.

Cool beans :) Any concern about the motor overheating? Seems like the bilge pumps are at least partially cooled by the water or at least they seem to burn out a lot faster without it. I believe it is just the lip seals that needs to be kept cool. In normal operation in the bilge of a boat, the enti...

I believe he is using claws from sparkfun. See this thread for a link:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=438

I bought one and was not impressed with the quality, FWIW. Might be okay if you were actually using it with a servo (I wasn't) and not underwater.

Red and Blue will be where you attach your motor controller (relay, etc.). Black and Green will need to be respectively at 0 and 5 Volts(or other reference voltage of your choice). Yellow will connect to your microcontroller or other circuitry. The voltage level on the yellow wire will correspond to...

Ah, okay. I went and found my notes from when I did current draw/propeller/thrust tests a few years ago for some 1000 gph bilge pumps. The Robbe 50mm drew ~5.3 amps @~12 Volts, and a similarly sized Octura propeller that I also tested drew 5.6 Amps. I also tested some others that drew a greater curr...

I have measured from 4 to 8 amps current draw at 12 volts, depending on the bilge pump GPH and propeller efficiency. There is no 'thrust to current gain' outright in using variable speed control. However, since you are only using as much thrust (and as a result, current) as you need for any given si...

I still think mag-coupled thrusters is the way to go. If the oil heats up doesn't that mean that your motors are working too hard to turn in the added viscosity of the oil (rather than air)? It doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong - brushed dc motors can get hot even under normal operation in...

Cool, keep up the good work. I really like your control scheme, with each device being "smart".