Homebuilt ROVs Forum

The slip ring was purchased on Ebay for about $6. It had more conductors than I needed so I tripled the power ones to get more current through.

As far as the tether I am really trying to keep the bulk down. I did find a rope that makes cat5 bouyant but it makes the diameter about 1/2" and probably won't provide enough protection. I am looking at using polyurathane tubing with the twisted pairs threaded through with a 6mm OD. I can get over 100m of that on my tether reel and it will be negative but I plan to add some extra bouyancy to the part nearest the ROV to get it neutral.

Excellent, and thanks for the reply. I did find another recent post for a slip ring by Adrafruit ($25). Looks like there are a few options out there!

This weekend I performed a test with just the camera as I have no motors mounted currently and still have electronics to work out onboard. I sent the ROV down to about 65 feet. I had no lights either so the first thing I noticed is that it is very dark below about 30 feet in the Sound. When retrieveing I discovered my float had compressed significantly enough to crack the fiberglass shell. I thought it would take at least 100 feet to notice this. So I will have to make a new syntactic float soon since the insulation foam is not able to withstand much pressure at all.

Great feedback on the foam.. thanks for the update and good luck with your next design!

Pictures of the control setup and the float that crushed a bit at 65'.

Here is a video of my thruster test.


I still have some more testing to do with different props. I am working on getting my motors potted and a few design changes to the thruster housings.

looks like your battery was dropping out there at the end.
I saw 9.5v at one point.

Progress on cramming everything in and wiring it together. Camera on the Left , Arduino Nano, and motor controllers. On the underside are the two Lipos.

Here is a video from the summer to keep things going. This was before brushless upgrade.

Just a quick update. I am having tons of trouble getting my 485 converters to work. I am using the wireless PS2 controller and can't figure out what pins to use for high and low to enable comms. It looks like the 485 examples have pin 13 but the PS2 is set on that right now. I am trying to use Nick Sopwith's programs since they do what I want and I can't get my programs to work but don't know what pins to use.

https://sites.google.com/site/underwate ... m/hardware

Any suggestions on where the pins are set in the program would help!

Thanks!