Hello from Oregon

[dv/dt]

My son (in high school) and I are venturing into the ROV world. We have been doing competitive robotics (I as mentor/coach, he as student) at various levels so that is where our building and controls background comes from. We also spend a lot of time on the water including the ocean. We have some nice reefs where we fish and we'd like to see what's down there.
Our first project is similar to the MATE Pufferfish with a video feed. It will be really basic with a 50' tether. We have most of the parts already and also have a 3D printer for other parts.
And thanks for all the great info on this forum!

[TigerShark]

Welcome! Is 50 feet long enough off the coast there? I am on Puget Sound and am going to 100m for my standard tether. Don't forget you need some driving room as well as the depth.

[dv/dt]

Our tether length was mostly based on the control system we have access to - a lego mindstorms and some motor controllers from FIRST FTC robotics program. With those, we are keeping everything topside and running 4 separate power lines down for each motor. To avoid too much voltage drop, we are keeping the tether short. But your point is a good one. We are going to increase it to 75 feet. The depths of the reefs we plan to explore are 15 to 20 feet and we will be drifting from our boat to avoid current problems. For our first attempt at an ROV, we want to keep it as simple and low cost as possible. Our next version will be arduino with ESCs on board the ROV and we will run things longer, but that's another level of investment - equipment and knowledge.

[sthone]

Welcome to the forum, it's great to see your doing this with your son. Simple is good you have to start somewhere.

Don't be afraid to share your work we have all levels of builders on here and your stuff no mater how simple you think it may be just might inspire some other beginner.

-Steve