Has anyone here worked on some kind of emergency surfacing device for underwater vehicles? I’m building this AUV, and we have some work coming up where we’re attaching some very expensive sensors too it, and I’d like some piece of mind that there is a back up plan if this doesn’t come back up on it…

I am working on something that sounds similar; A small self-contained ‘antenna’ with LoRa, GNSS reciever and lights. Will flash lights and transmit position periodically when activated, can be activated by a number of mechanisms including some fail-safes such as mission time-out, lack of FCU activi…

do you have any pictures of this you can share? And does this deploy subsea and float to the surface on it’s own? I’m using and ELRS system on the surface, but I’m concerned if it fails underwater I won’t be able to find it.

It’s just a breadboard of the electronics at the moment so no pictures, I’ll try and remember to circle back to this and post them when its further along. I’ve not used ELRS but my understanding of it is that its a protocol you can send over LoRa. What I’m building is intended to be rigidly attached…

I was looking at the little Swim rescue things as well. They would work in shallow water, but I need a way to activate it reliably, ideally without connecting into the main power supply. Have you looked at these SPOT trackers ? if you could solve the problem of making it pressure tolerant, then it m…

Can you mechanically bias your buoyancy engine? That way when the power is removed it will tend towards positively buoyant

[image] SURF Robotics: they also rely a lot on the internal electrons working to tell it to drop the weight. It’s possible to have chemical releases as well, by attaching it with a water-soluble material, but then there’s a maximum submersion time per dive (which may be somewhat variable), an…

I can see how that could work, but I think it may add a lot of inefficiency to the normal operation of the AUV. My current setup has one internal oil bladder, one external oil bladder, and a pump between the two. I had thought about putting the internal bladder inside a hydraulic accumulator, so th…

Thanks, Eliot. I’ve actually been looking into something like a drop weight attached with <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Calvas-Magnesium-Ribbon-Grams-99-95/dp/B07RXTG13L/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WQAZZN2S18NH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.kBHhO3U3XIiVGxvBfKxhUFNyIYoNDFLaH93bTrpsdNVJyFX6gvhilZWSqjv0eoRi7HzBvZBv4Ow8KF_YPAz7ifuqbq0RmXmlSNVX7F49DJHz0xiMSfWNeND0iUKyH4eIjMxb9T3g9NT1CawBkdUAA7GoaNRgBXvvxPukwZmr1d5QWjkDnSUNaqwSF2bfpRl9VX7FIp9Pu5X49Ku2mzCeb1H3PlbihYQzbUvOfstAqmq5UYLutcQVUfFo_H7dOObBLyL1cnceX938wSyjjmi9tA.aiJbEyTukZ_rFSjy7INCBw9goOgZ8AMWh4poThNsxtE&dib_tag=se&keywords=magnesium+ribbon&qid=1781716009&sprefix=magnesium+ribb%2Caps%2C166&sr=8-1" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">this magnesium ribbon . If I clamp the ribbon with stainless screws, the galvanic corrosion should eventually dissolve the magnesium and release the weight. Some testing would be needed to dial in the timing an…

[image] SURF Robotics: If I clamp the ribbon with stainless screws, the galvanic corrosion should eventually dissolve the magnesium and release the weight. Some testing would be needed to dial in the timing and reliability. Fair enough. I imagine that’s quite reliant on the salinity of the wa…

Thanks for all the info Eliot, I like the idea of using PVA because it’ll also work in the freshwater lakes that I’m currently testing in, and I already have some. The hard part of testing underwater robots that don’t have a tether is that when they fail, you typically don’t get them back. so havin…

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Build/Make DIY AUVs

Scott_W (Scott W) June 24, 2026, 7:09am 14

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