Homebuilt ROVs Forum

Hello all,

I am working on constructing a ROV as a special additional project to wrap up my undergrad in the maritime field. I've attached some pictures of the design and calculations, and will be updating this thread as I continue testing and construction.

The engineering aspect of this project will be measuring power efficiency using computational fluid dynamics for predictions of thrust, drag, speed, angular velocity, etc. Construction will primarily consist of 3D printing elements to be filled with syntactic foam, and TIG welding for the aluminum frame.

At this point, my main questions stem from the electrical sphere. Based on my schematic, does anyone see any obvious problems?

Thanks for any input you all may have!

Hi Matt,
Your plans look good, have you considered adding any sensors to your electrics i.e leak detection, depth, water temp etc? I'd love to see how your code is built to communicate between Arduino / Raspberry Pi and PC. My current build is only with comms between 2x arduinos and I'm very much a novice when it comes to coding.

PhilA wrote:Hi Matt,
Your plans look good, have you considered adding any sensors to your electrics i.e leak detection, depth, water temp etc? I'd love to see how your code is built to communicate between Arduino / Raspberry Pi and PC. My current build is only with comms between 2x arduinos and I'm very much a novice when it comes to coding.

Thanks Phil. Long term goal is to add some basic sonar and thermal sensors for obstacle avoidance, but right now I'm just focused on the basics. I'd like to do serial communication between the Pi and Arduino, but to start out, I'll be running the arduino IDE on my PI with inputs from the surface over VNC. I'll be regularly updating in the next couple weeks with more information and code and the project moves along.

Hello everybody.

Since I last posted this update, I have changed just about everything related to the design, internals, and controls.
The ROV is almost done though. If anybody is interested, the project can be found at mlsolutions.tech/rov

Nice to see also the fluid sims on your site. Have fun building.