2nd Dive Water Leak Detected

General Discussion
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I’ve used my new heavy configuration with newton gripper ROV a few times now. I had a water leak detected on my second dive a week after the first dive. Sure enough there was a little water inside the main electronics enclosure; the SOS sponges were both swollen, the desiccant pack glaring red. I took the whole thing apart and cleaned and re-siliconed all the o-rings. My best guess was that the dome covering the camera was not properly tightened when it was delivered but I can’t be sure. Only one of the SOS sensors worked after completely drying out so I had to physically disconnect the other one so as not to continuously trip the alarm. On subsequent dives afterwards, I’ve seen no signs of water ingress. Obviously this whole situation has freaked me out which has led to lots of reading on these forums about potential problems with the penetrators?

Is this still an issue? I noticed a lot of these complaints were from a few years ago? We want to use this ROV on a daily basis swapping out a few batteries each day. Is it reasonable to expect we can do this without too much concern over water ingress?

I’m absolutely loving its operation so far and we’ve already succeeded in retrieving lost fishing gear with it. How rigorously do others use there BlueROV without any issues? We have to apply for funding in the next few days and now I’m concerned we may have issues if we decide to use the BlueROV on a steady basis. I’m hoping this is just a case of the nervous newbie.

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Well I’m not seeing many takers so I’ll interpret that as a good thing. I’ll notch this down to operator/builder error. Luckily I came out unscathed with no apparent water touching the electronics. I’m grateful we have the SOS sensors. They obviously did their job well. I’m still curious what kind of work load people on here put their ROV through. Is it mostly 1 battery trip per session; 2, 3, etc…

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Hi @Willemb,

Sorry to hear that!

The Probes, Probe Tips, and Desiccant Bags can be bought separately, which is helpful if they get wet or damaged and need replacing :slight_smile:

We have a reasonably extensive Operation Guide which includes a pre-dive checklist and recommended maintenance.

If the pre-dive checks are completing successfully then it’s expected that the vehicle should be good to go :slight_smile:

Potted penetrators are challenging to install consistently (especially at scale), and can at times fail somewhat unpredictably, which is a big part of why we’ve stopped using them on our products. I’ll direct you to this comment for more info :slight_smile:

Great to hear! :smiley:

Indeed - leaks in something like an enclosure often at least start out slow, so having an early warning system is super helpful for avoiding major failures due to water damage :slight_smile: