I've always been interested in anything mechanical or robotic but I got started building Rov's as a result of fishing. I use to do a lot of fishing and I had a fish finder on my boat that would show the depth and contour of the bottom of the lake but I wanted to see what type of actual structure and where the fish were hiding down there. One day while watching the Discovery Channel on tv I saw a show with remote operated vehicles, I started thinking "That's what I need" so I set out to make my own.

Back then I couldn't find any sites about building your own Rov's so I fooled around with different designs for about a year, the hardest part was the thrusters. There was a lot of trial and error involved and lot of failed attempts, I almost gave up a few times but persistence finally paid off and I came up with a design that worked. I got side tracked now and then by different things and it wasn't until I found Rov.net and saw they were running a Rov design competition that I actually finished my first Rov the Stinger.

This site originally started out as my entry page for the competition but I decided to turn it into a web site to share my ideas and help others who where trying to build there own. I have been fooling around with homebuilt rov's in one aspect or another since the mid 90's and have been running this site since 1998. I registered Homebuiltrovs.com in August 2003 and have been updating it any time I work on anything new.

-Steve