Last day of 2012, looking forward to 2013

Over the Christmas holidays I've made a bit of progress with regards to the design of my "ROV to be", so here's a screenshot of my efforts so far.

As you can see it's a vectored (horizontal thrusters) open frame design with two vertical thrusters and a few other major assemblies, including the thrusters, the frame, an acrylic tube at the front containing the camera and LED lights (eventually) and a junction box in the middle containing the batteries etc.

I haven't machined syntactic foam before so that should be pretty interesting when I eventually get around to that, probably towards the end of the build.

I'm still a bit undecided at the moment regarding how to compensate the ROV with oil, as apart from the acrylic tube everything is going to be oil filled, containing pressure tolerant electronics and batteries.

I received a price to 3D print the kort nozzle and it was rather more than I expected at about £100 for one! So i'll probably end up using my CNC machine to produce something eventually, unless I can find a better price somewhere else.

All the best for 2013 and hopefully i'll be a bit closer to producing a real ROV by this time next year (instead of just a 3D drawing) now I'm pretty happy with my thruster design.

ROV Design End of 2012

Well, it's now coming to the end of 2012, so I thought I'd post some information on the current state of play with my ROV design.

No real physical progress, but lots on the design side of things.

It'll  just be a matter of raising the funds to get the designs manufactured in 2013 I suppose, we'll see :)

I've just added RS485 to my thruster PCB as I think that a multidrop network on the ROV, when it eventually comes together, would probably be the way to go.

Here's a screenshot of the design so far, it's pretty tight on there and that's just one side of the PCB!

The large through hole DIP IC is a Microchip microcontroller to control the brushless DC motor in the thruster.

On the mechanical side of things, here's an image of the thruster as it stands currently.


I've created a new design for the Kort nozzle that I'm hoping to get 3D printed, depending on cost, then we'll see how it performs in the tank next year.

I've also been looking at the design of the actual ROV (in its very formative stages (see below)) with six thrusters, four horizontal and two vertical.

Putting six thrusters on the design really shows how complex a vectored open frame design can be, but the benefits I think will outweigh the complexity in the end, increased thrust and maneuverability to name but two. Although there's a slim possibility I may go for a three thrustered configuration initially to cut down on costs, we'll see.

OK that's it for 2012, I hope everybody has a great Christmas and New Year, and hopefully 2013 will see some of my ROV plans getting closer to fruition :>