Bluerov2 retrofit upgrade; low light camera feed connectivity issues

Blue Robotics Vehicles BlueROV2
1

Hey blue robotics team- hoping you can help me solve this issue.

The issue:

Our Bluerov2 is connecting/ communication with our laptops, but when you tilt the camera up or down, the video feed drops out for a few seconds. This has been getting worse the last few weeks, with time for the the video feed to reconnect increasing, and occasionally the communication with the ROV drops out as well.

See video example:

Camera specs:

{2DBB412C-971A-4667-8C11-B2DFA5B2005C}
{2DBB412C-971A-4667-8C11-B2DFA5B2005C}1364×790 177 KB

Problem solving so far:

  • Checked internal connections of the low-light HD USB camera (no notable issues)
  • Upgraded blueOS to latest stable version 1.4.3
  • Upgraded ArduSub to latest stable version 4.5.7
  • QGC is running on v4.2.8
  • The same issue is occurring in both QGC and cockpit (not an application specific issue)
  • Issue is persistent after testing different laptops, fathom-tether interface boxes, intermediate tethers, tethers, and printer cables.
  • The CPU that the camera is pulling is quite high; ~140%, but I read in another forum that this is normal and can fluctuate a fair bit.
  • I ran a local network test and it is sitting at ~23Mpbs
  • Checked video format; screenshot attached.
  • {742E4A50-09FA-49ED-AE7B-BBB38DEE3982}
    {742E4A50-09FA-49ED-AE7B-BBB38DEE3982}747×877 72.1 KB

Additionally, when connected to the ROV, QGC shows these warnings when I open vehicle setup in QGC:

IMG_2967
IMG_29671920×2560 829 KB

IMG_2681
IMG_26811920×1440 391 KB

Extra info:

  • the device I am using is running on windows 11
  • Bluerov2 was upgraded from companion/ pixhawk to navigator / blueOS with a raspberry pi4 in May last year. Has been running smoothly until the video stream issue arose in January this year.

Thanks for you help!

2

Hi @Kristen_M

That sounds like either a problem with the USB cable from pi to camera, or that the camera itself is dying - perhaps affected by technical bulletin 12 if old enough?

Wiggle the cable without moving the camera- if it causes an issue it may be the cable? See

3

Hi @tony-white

Thanks for the reply! I think the camera in the ROV is even older than the model in technical bulletin 12. I don’t think we’ve replaced any of our ROV cameras since 2018…

I think the board may have been failing on the camera, so I took a camera out of our currently inactive ROV- seemed to fix the problem!
I’ll be upgrading to the more recent camera model soon, but this was a good intermediate fix :slight_smile:

Thanks for getting back to me!