@TCIII wrote:
Hi All,
I am sure that many of you have heard of the OpenROV Project which involves building your own ROV from a kit. I am an experienced model builder with plenty of experience and a reasonably equipped workshop, but I was a little taken aback at the complexity of assembling the OpenROV from their kit of parts. It seemed to me to be a high school to college level project requiring a small team of experienced modelers to successfully put the OpenROV together though I could be wrong.
It appeared to me that there were a number of critical assembly requirements that had to be performed spot on as there was no going back to realign or reseal once the assembly was completed. Therefore I have been looking around to see if there might be an easier way to design and build a ROV similar to the OpenROV without having to perform some of the critical assemblies required to complete the OpenROV.
One area of the OpenROV design that I took exception to was the thrusters. They were not going to last very long when immersed in seawater due to the exposed bearings and stator/armature. To me this was a kind of deal breaker as to the questionable lifespan of these thrusters. I know that commercial thrusters are not cheap (think Seabotics or CrustCrawler) and the OpenROV project was just trying to overcome the high price of commercial thrusters with their homebrew design. Still the unknown lifespan of the OpenROV design did not leave me with a warm feeling to say the least.
Then came along Blue Robotics and their T100 Thruster KickStarter Project Link. Their design approach looks good and they have actually tested and characterized prototypes of the thrusters they will deliver to the pledgers. With the addition of the in-thruster water cooled ESC this design becomes very attractive in that it reduces the number of wire penetrations in the Water Tight Compartment (WTC).
Great! Now we have a source of reasonably priced thrusters so what is next? Well, that is where you, the ArduBoat members, come in.
Let's start thinking about the WTC, navigation controller, communication, power, ballast, buoyancy, etc. and attempt to come up with a reasonably priced ROV that the average ArduBoat member might want to consider building.
Regards,
TCIII AVD
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