I am new to the forum and I am looking to buy an underwater ROV. I am amazed by the quality of the BLUEROV2, but I am on a budget, so I was hoping some of you may give me some precious advice. I am a hobbyist and I would be using the ROV mainly for videography in saltwater (I am planning on attaching an insta360 camera to it or even something better in the future). I could possible buy a R3 version of BLUEROV2, but with a relevant economical effort. For this reason I was considering the CHASING GLADIUS MINI S. I think the main problems with the GLADIUS MINI are a significantly lower stability underwater (due to its much lower weight) and in general a much faster wear. In particular what worries me the most are
the longevity of the thrusters (every piece of information I have found concerned somebody complaining about them being stuck or at the very first dives)
potential difficulty of handling the insta without an absurd drawback in battery duration per dive (I have read somewhere that attaching a gopro to the bigger brother of the gladius mini, that is the chasing m2, was halving the battery duration down to ~30 minutes).
the battery is not easily replaceable, you need to open the main cabin, which is kind of a black box.
Does anybody have any experience with it? Could you please tell me how much did the thrusters last (I know that there are a lot of variables, but I am interested in your personal experience)? Also, I am concerned about the availability of chasing spare parts, since it seems much less straightforward to buy them from Chasing with respect to the parts you can by from local distributors of BlueRobotics (I am based in Europe).
About the BLUEROV2: how many dives (assume average conditions where the visibility is good enough to take videos) should I expect the T200 thrusters to last if maintained with good care after each dive?
In the end, what do you recommend between the 2 ROVS? Thank you so much!
Just avoid Chasing products all together. I know nothing about the BLUEROV2 but Chinese underwater drones are my area of expertise. Any Google search tells you they have always had big problems from day 1 they came out, and still continue to this day.
Hi Phil, thank you very much for your feedback! I understand your point, that is right. It seems you have direct experience with Chasing products. If yes, could you please tell me more about your personal experience with them? I know you have already answered, but I would be interested in knowing from a practical point of view what kind of problems you may have had (and how you solved them). Thanks again!
I can say that I initially purchased an OpenROV Trident back when they were available for simple video work underwater. It was similar form factor to the Chasing and Fifish ROVs. It also had problems with the thrusters getting jammed and eventually with water leaking into the case, which was impossible to repair.
I think that BlueROV is about as low cost as you can get and still get a reliable product. Anything less expensive really falls into the “toy” category for me.
BlueROV comes with good support, and it can be repaired and upgraded. I think it will end up costing less in the long run, compared to buying and throwing away 2-3 chinese drones. Just my thoughts.
Hi Travis, thank you so much for your reply and the footage! Those are very good points. What about the T200 thusters? What is your experience? How many dives have you had before replacing one?
I haven’t had to replace any thrusters since they switched to the Wet Link style penetrators. (The old epoxy potted penetrators on thrusters could leak, and Blue replaced all mine under warranty when the Wet Link penetrators came out.)
A couple months ago I had one thruster start running rough on our BlueROV Heavy. Some of the coating flaked off one of the magnets inside. I was able to disassemble it and clean it out in the field without much trouble. But that one will probably need to be replaced pretty soon.
I quickly made an account just so I could vent my gripes about the Chasing Gladius Mini S! We purchased one about 3 or 4 years ago and it was probably the biggest waste of money, would have been far better to wait and spend more on a system like BlueROV2. Below is a list of issues we had:
The biggest issue, the thrusters are terrible. They are some cheap motor and no matter how much we rinsed, sprayed with lubricant, tried silicon sprays, they would always lock up after use in saltwater. I had to replace 4 of the thrusters after leaving it for a few months of no use in storage. I ended up being pretty good at freeing them with some spray lubricant and a screwdriver but just not good enough quality for salt-water use. Our BlueROV has had no issues so far (about a year and half) with locking up.
The shape and design make it inherently unstable. Because it is a wing shape and the down thrusters don’t independently level the ROV, it has a tendency to start rocking in high currents which make it hard to control. This became worse as the thrusters started seizing and running at different speeds. Also in higher currents, if you not going straight into the current the rov can be really hard to drive. It also uses a lot of power to hold its depth.
With the motors being located where they are, it will suck up any debris if you get anywhere close to the bottom. More than once, we had to clear it of shells or sand after using it to get the motors to spin again.
They used cheap screw with the dumb security torx heads. I wish they would just use an allen head and make it less likely to snap something when taking it apart, which you will have to do.
Although the camera is good (I would say it’s better than the BlueROV which in my opinion is terrible and a real let down for the cost of the unit), it is a pain to get the footage off the ROV. It records to an internal SD card that you can’t remove. You have to use the clunky and buggy app to download it to your phone which constantly failed to download. Also, it doesn’t automatically split video files while recording like most modern action cameras. So you end up with large files that are even harder to download. I would recommend stopping the recording every few minutes and restarting it so the files are more manageable.
Battery is not replaceable so if it starts to degrade than you are out of luck. Also, if you are doing lots of dives in a day you are limited to charging times.
Has to use wifi of your phone to connect which can be annoying if you try to use the internet while.
The other big point is repairability. With the bluerov you become pretty knowledgeable when assembling the unit so replacing parts and doing any maintenance is a lot easier. Plus they sell all the parts still and hopefully will continue to be around for a long time
In summary, the gladius is a poorly designed toy. If you can get one for like $300 or something than it could be a good option to at least get going or if you need a disposable option. I was hoping to strap it to a block and use it as a drop camera but the tether broke during a high current retrieval where it wrapped around the prop of the boat, and I haven’t been able to get it to reconnect to the controller since.
Here are 2 pros:
The tether is quick disconnect which is great. It is a pain that bluerov doesn’t come with a quick disconnect out of the box
Thanks for the positive feedback! The two big issues you identify with the BlueROV2, the camera quality and lack of tether disconnect are the top priorities for the Blue Robotics R&D team at the moment, and exciting things are coming to address them!
In the meantime, you can greatly improve the clarity of the default low-light camera by focusing it - removing from the mount, loosening the set screw, and twisting the lens about 1/2 to 3/4 turn counterclockwise will focus the camera much better in water… And if you’re in a hurry to get a tether disconnect on your vehicle, you could use Blue Trail’s solution (although it does rely on potting, which the BR WetLink connector does not!)
I use this connector for the tether. Works great. I don’t think it uses any potting. It seals against the back plate with an O-ring, and there is another O-ring inside the connector.
I can vouch for this connector. It’s a pretty clever design.
I was referring to the potting on the cable side of a Cobalt connection, which is used to seal the cable to the connector housing. That design is also not open-faced rated, which isn’t typically an issue for ROV applications. The WetLink connector will be mated and open-face rated to 1000m, just not possible to connect while immersed (“wet-mate-able”)
Mine uses a polyurethane hose slipped over a hose barb on the connector to make the seal. Of course, I had to splice the connector pigtail to the yellow tether with a 3m kit. So there is some epoxy in the mix.
Hi @EAIROV, thank you very much for your detailed answer! I was suspecting all this… The bluerov is definitely the way to go if you have the money for it. May I ask you whether your model is actually the “gladius mini” instead of the “gladius mini s”? The SD card should have become removable with the new version of the rov, which is the “s” one.
Hello, I used the blue ROV, Fifish v6s, chasing P200 and P200pro to detect underwater structure. If you want to shot some vlogs, I recommend you to buy a Fifish or Chasing, they are more reliable and convinent, and the softwares, the apps are easy to use, maybe you can buy a FIFISH V-EVO (https://www.mantsbrite.com/CMS/CMS/content/S638249437018312780/FIFISH%20V-EVO%20Brochure%202024%20Mantsbrite.pdf), a cheap and designed for underwater vlogs model. And I recommend you to use Blue ROV to do some research, because there are many open source codes on github.
Another aspect you should ask yourself. Do you want to open your rov and change or customize it from time to time or you want a plug and play item?
Once assembled a BlueRov will do both while a chasing or similar will only do what it do until it become obsolete. Yes it will be simpler to use on the first day but will it be able to adapt to your project on the long run. Probably not.
If you don’t want to understand how the rov work internally an off the shelf product might be more suitable.
Hi @Charles , thank you very much for answering! I actually already know how a ROV generally works internally and I like the possibility of being able to evolve it in the future. I would have already bought the bluerov2 if it weren’t for the price…
It would be awesome if BlueRobotics released a smaller ROV with smaller thusters at a much lower price than the bluerov2. I would definitely buy it and I think also most of the people who bought chasing products. Such an ROV would have no real competitors in the 2-3k portion of the market.
Agreed! And we’d love to. Unfortunately our development resources are limited, and there are lots of other products people are interested in too.
For some context around the relevant challenges and expectations - sustainable production of a more affordable vehicle requires development work across a range of products (so comes about via incremental releases rather than one big one), while also typically requiring substantial production quantities (to benefit from economies of scale), so even once the underlying technology is established there’s likely to be a ramp-up period for production.
An entire vehicle release is a significant undertaking, and a cheaper variant of an existing vehicle is unlikely to be released as a surprise - there’ll be several steps along the way
Thruster design aside, I’d personally be interested in a vehicle with something like a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W as the control computer, a stripped back Navigator variant with fewer expansion ports, just a few thrusters (maybe vectorised with servos, or control surfaces for steering and a single thruster for propulsion, or other low cost advanced control mechanisms), possibly one or two fixed cameras, and less surrounding hardware required to contain everything.
Hopefully I’ll be able to make time for something like that once I get back to my StaROV project, but there’s still some pretty major documentation work I’m focused on in the meantime, so I don’t expect that’ll be particularly soon
