My Meager Machine

[Deakel]

I've been working on this for about 3 months and have about got it ready. The cup seems to stay dry except at 82 ft i got a little water in but not much. I haven't put the camera in yet. Still testing and I made the frame smaller than it was to increase speed and maneuverability it helped quite a bit. I'm currently working out the balance and buoyancy issues. Gettin close still trying to find the best way to make the tether neutrally buoyant, pool noodles don't seem to work. This site and forum are a great resource and have been the inspiration I've needed to start and work through this project.
Thanks Guys
Deakel

[bossfrog]

Wow! That really looks nice. How about some details on the ROV?

[Deakel]

The frame is 1/2" pvc The cup is just a plastic water bottle I cut the top off of I cut Lexan for the motor mounts and rings around the opening of the cup. The Lexan is 1/8" thick. I also cut matching rings out of aluminum to help keep and even pressure around the bolt holes. The motors are ducted fans from Tower Hobbies http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wt ... XSBF7&P=ML. They run great right in the water. I'm supplying 12v from car batteries on my boat. The tether is 100' long, 14-2 low voltage wire from home depot for power, cat 5 cable for relay switching, and a 22-2 for video feed. I purchased a USB to RCA video capture cable from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-S-Vi ... 991&sr=8-1. I'm feeding video into a laptop. and controlling the ROV with a joystick i hacked out of my kids old Atari style game. It has the 4 switches in it and wired it like this site shows http://www.homebuiltrovs.com/howtojoystickhbridge.html. same with the relays. Six for motor control DPDT and 1 for lights SPDT. The lights are gonna have to be redone again for the fourth time. The ones in it now are 9 LED flashlights hacked I had to put a 47 OHM resistor in to drop a couple volts so as not to burn them up. They're getting a little water in them. The camera is a security camera with a 2 wire out for video feed and it needs 12v power, which I have to power independently cause of voltage drop when I turn on motors the video glitches. So I'm building a battery holder out of pvc for 4 3v lithium batteries that will be on board. I'll just take out a battery to turn off the camera for now. Dive and Surface are run with a on-off-on toggle from the auto parts store and lights are controlled with a regular toggle switch. All the controls are mounted on a wood box I constructed. Pretty simple setup for now just to get my feet wet. Eventually I'll upgrade and rebuild it all different with a controller, temp sensor, pressure sens, compass, speed controllers, servos for camera control, etc.

[Deakel]

Fourth frame I've built this one seems to be the best so far. The most stable, it dives and surfaces reasonably level I made a better battery box for the batteries supplying the camera and the duel cups one at each end balances the weight and buoyancy really well. The size and shape of the frame I built this way to help the small motors keep up with the mass of the ROV. The first frame was just to big and awkward the second frame flipped upside down in the water,
the third frame i found with the dive motor in the rear would tip the ROV up or down depending on diving or surfacing. So I designed this frame and so far so good. Hopefully now this frame can be glued and painted.
If anybody has any questions or wants to see pics of failed frame types I'd be happy to post them for reference.
Rallin

[timothyalderson]

How do the fans run right in the water? Have you tested them deep yet? I like your frame design. Its looks really good. I'm also interested in the pressure hull. Any good pictures or maybe a build sheet?

[Mareike]

Very nice Homework. That is more than a good basic as start and extend all sensors later.. How is it with the light in the same housing as the cam, i guess that will give a bit of a head but the rest looks like a nice piece of equipment...
Well designed..

[Deakel]

The lights around the camera are IR LED's that didn't help out at all so i disabled them. It also helps with life of batteries that run the camera. The Lights Im using are Harbor Freight 9 led flash lights that i modified to run on external batteries and can be switched on and off at the control box top side.

[electronicscrazy]

What's the dimensions of your forth frame?

[Deakel]

Sorry it took so long I havn't checked this site in a while.

[Rover]

Great info.

Question:

How does your camera work. Do you have any IR reflection on the inside of the camera dome when the IR LEDS turn on?

Jim