Quick tour of the ROV Interior hardware

This is the first draft of the ROV's interior. Though the current production draft fits a bit tighter with the camera tilt servo and faceplate (which protects the raspberry pi from water drippings when you remove the dome), I think it gives you a pretty good idea of the hardware layout. You have a LiPo battery compartment down the center of the 3D printed "cradle" (out of view), which kind of acts like the interior's core. This fits a 2200mah 3S lipo, but let us know if you have any ideas on how to get a bigger battery in there!

Then we have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B mounted forward of the LiPo compartment. This is positioned with the GPIO pins facing the rear dome. That makes it pretty difficult to accidentally unplug anything while you're getting set up for a dive.

On either side of the dome, we have our dual channel motor drivers. These communicate with the RPi via PWM from the GPIO pins. To make any changes to the GPIO setup, or add hardware, just unscrew the right-hand motor driver.

(almost) all the hardware you need for an ROV dive fit into a 6-inch diameter pressure sphere! In the production model, the RPi camera sits on a tilt servo mount, and the RPi 3 B is protected by a cover. These are removed here so you have a better idea of the hardware inside!

6 comments

6 Comments

virtualmoving

Dec 23, 2019

Hi it’s really interesting and helpful answer but for the RJ can you think it’s be better enclose all cables one by one small hole are more easy for epoxy easy to filing ( I’m French sorry if my English is not perfect 🙂

costassoler

Replying to

Thanks for the comment!!

I think that's a pretty cool idea. I actually did consider using smaller self-sealing screws to serve as bulkhead penetrations for each Ethernet wire. However, that introduces a lot more potential spots where corrosion can set in if they're not sealed properly. To avoid problems with corrosion on the Ethernet wires, we decided to go with an epoxy seal around the wires themselves.

As far as one smaller hole for each wire, I'd be very interested to see how thatmight work. I personally feel a bit safer with one hole (fewer seals to break). But I do think you have a point, since a few well-sized holes probably would be even more secure. Definitely a good experiment to try!