Hi everyone, I teach secondary DT and have a very keen group of pupils in Pembrokeshire who are making a submersible ROV as a lunchtime project. We are looking to use Pi to control 3x 2A motors and need full PWM through a SSR or mosfet, hoping to use a ready made hat for that. Also steam video down umbilical (100m Ethernet on tether) to monitor on surface. 5ah, 18v LIPO drill power packs. Also considering using microbit as input for it’s pitch/yaw and direction capabilities. Anyone done something similar so we can pick brains? Thanks pimoroni, your stuff is excellent! Marv
I believe Piborg make some pretty good motor controller hats that’ll handle everything you need on that front. The Zeroborg might be a good place to start.
I’ve built a couple of little robots but nothing that lives underwater!
Streaming the video should be pretty easy, you just have the umbilical run to a switch and then stream the video via a simple web interface. Not sure if a standard ethernet cable would be resilient enough though (unless you can get a special type that is more flexible).
Good luck and if you have any questions, feel free to fire away and we’ll try our best to help!
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Thanks Andy, i went on Piborg, great call thanks, i also bought the voltage regulator which should drop the supply from the drill battery perfectly. I was tempted by the accelerometer unit but I’ll have to see if it is compatible with the motor driver board fitted. Switching to pi zero also makes sense also, there is quite a lot of room in the enclosure but i imagine we will be putting stiffening ribs inside the 125mm tube. I bought 100m of rubberized Cat4 cable but the plan for the tether is to bundle it with some floating Kevlar braided 3mm rope (for when it gets stuck!). We will have to box clever to get everything to work off the one cable I’m thinking! Thanks for the help. One of the boys is keen to blog the build so i should post a link!
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