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Running brushless underwater with battery on a budget

Posted: Mar 16th, 2017, 5:07 am
by Astronaut
I am doing an engineering project for school where I may order parts and create a budget. I am making a lot of the ROV with materials we have on hand at school, but some things like motors I need to order on my own. I need a source for cheap parts. Also, I am located in Sweden. So US shipping doesn't really work.

For example, I need at least 3 motors- L/R and Vertical. The thing is, brushless can be expensive. I have found small ones for about $18 online and I would assume they work considering my ROV is only about 9 inches by 6 inches, with a depth of 5 inches. It's not very big. But 3 of those together is already $54!

Then, there are batteries. I want to put them in the ROV to minimize voltage drop. One alone is somewhere around $25 and to get a desired operating time, running my camera and thrusters, I would want to use 2. That's another $50! Not to mention ESC's...

I want to find a circuit board camera I can run up to the surface but those are about $30. I can do that, but it's not preferable.

I was planning a $200 budget on this but I don't see it working out the way I wanted to. I might have to make some sacrifices. So far, I have these options:

-Spend a majority of my budget on the motors and batteries
-Use brushed DC motors and make a housing on the lathe from some sort of plastic (then I can use relays and the battery, controlling it from an Arduino)
-Not have a camera I can view from the top

ROVer's, I need some help. How did you overcome the cost challenge? What parts did you use? Would you be willing to donate to a student for his school project?

I'm under a time crunch here too. Help is appreciated!

Re: Running brushless underwater with battery on a budget

Posted: Mar 17th, 2017, 7:43 am
by ArduROV
I would recommend https://hobbyking.com/

They have a EU warehouse in the netherlands and you can get everything you need for very good prices.