U-DRONE Amethyst AUV Platform

[MarcoMota]

You went a little overboard encasing the ESC in epoxy...i just meant, thin it with denatured alcohol so it has the consistency of water, and brush it on...thin...lol.

And those wires going through the penetrators??

I hope you stripped the insulation off of the part of the wire that goes through the penetrator, before you potted it...otherwise water will find a way inside the insulation somewhere, and force it's way along between the insulation and the copper until it's past the penetrator and inside the WTC.

Thankyou for the tips! Didn't think about water going through copper and the wire. Does this actually happen?

Since I use so many cables how could I make what you are suggesting without provoking a short circuit?

[Oddmar]

I use a circle of plastic cut from a gallon ice cream container, make small notches to hold the wires apart,. You can coat each stripped section, then bundle them together in the penetrator and pot them.

[MarcoMota]

Some more updates...

Waterproofing a custom PCB I made for the I2C temperature and pressure sensor MS5837-30BA

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Resinatura.JPG (246.86 KiB) Viewed 9034 times

[bigbadbob]

Hi Marco.
It's great to see someone making their own AUV, I'm an AUV engineer by trade and you don't see many DIY ones around so good on you.
I'd be interested to know how deep you intend to go and what sensors you will have on it?
good luck.
Bob.

[MarcoMota]

Hi Marco.
It's great to see someone making their own AUV, I'm an AUV engineer by trade and you don't see many DIY ones around so good on you.
I'd be interested to know how deep you intend to go and what sensors you will have on it?
good luck.
Bob.

Hey! Thankyou, at the moment the plan is to be able to go to a depth of 150meters. But I am going to test it with a 30meters tether for starters (at the moment for testing purposed I will contro it on the surface with a tether just like a ROV). The sensor that will be mounted for now are the pressure sensor, a temperature sensor and a camera. Anyways I decided to use an I2C bus to connect all the sensors so that the cable that transmits the I2C data can be reused for other sensors if needed without having to make new penetrators.

The submarine will be tested this week or the next week

Maybe this night I will post some updates on the build.

[bigbadbob]

Good stuff Marco. I'll be watching your progress.
I'd suggest some sort of simple sonar, maybe parking sensor based, to stop the AUV hitting the seabed.
Not a problem with ROV's as you can react to what you see on the camera but with Autonomous vehicles you can's so it's good to automate it.
And taking that one step further you can have a forward looking sonar too to react to things in front of the vehicle.

[MarcoMota]

Some updates...

The ROV works! I am now working on making nice PCB boards so to make wiring and the charging of the battery less confusing.


So many things have been done and for sure I will forget to mention some stuff... I will post some pictures and try to say a few words.

Here you can see the cad drawings for the pressure sensor. I made some tests and It gave me good values for pressure and for temperature. It stopped working after moving it. I used some very brittle copper wires and probably they broke off. Being it immersed in resin I couldnt repair it. I have another PCB ready with another sensor. This time I will use better wires.

CasePressureSensor Drawing v2.pdf

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This is a diagram showing how ROV comunication works in the SUB (comments are in Italian... but it should be simple to understand just by looking at the images)

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Comunication and tests between two tenda mdules

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Test of the ethernet ommunication and control

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The powerline comunication was handled using two Tenda powerline ethernet modules that I repurposed.

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I decided to use VNCviewer for now to control the subamrine and view the USB camera.

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Final result

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I will make some YouTube videos showing all the stuff that was done. For now I hope you enjoyed the update.

[bigbadbob]

Good to see your update Marco.
Interesting use of vertical thrusters so you will be able to hover.
I'll be interested to see how it performs in the water.
as long as you keep the centre of gravity low in the hull (keel weights?) it should stay upright and not roll.

[MarcoMota]

Good to see your update Marco.
Interesting use of vertical thrusters so you will be able to hover.
I'll be interested to see how it performs in the water.
as long as you keep the centre of gravity low in the hull (keel weights?) it should stay upright and not roll.

For now is bottom heavy and it doesnt float. In the hull on the bottom it has the batteryes. I will have to add some poliester and see if its enough to not make it roll. If it rolls o much I will add some static fins to it.

[fryslan76]

Looks realy nice, do you know which model of Tenda you used? I fried my set a few years ago and that is no longer available.

Thread on this forum with some of my experiments with powerline adapters
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=985&hilit=powerline&start=20