I wanted to use this opportunity to thank everyone on this forum for the unconditional support I received with building my small project - highly appreciated.
My goal was to be able to make an affordable water drone for kids to enjoy during summer break from school and the whole intent is to build it during the fall and winter season. This is not a one week project but one that requires a lot of patience and patience .
Most people have the money to buy the off the shelf (store product) but there is nothing satisfying about building something of your own - which in turn gives you lots of knowledge on the way things work .
I will also take this opportunity to recommend on donating to forums like this because without them I will not be able to achieve my goal of building this water drone .
I took this project on to utilize and polish my CAD drawing skills and I have learnt a lot on this epic journey . I will try to outline all the challenges and solution
Design
Make it as modular as possible to minimize the print time in your 3Dprinter
Customizable as possible being modular
Easy to assemble and replace parts
Functionality
Have enough movement to be able to achieve easy task in the water
Go to reasonable depths to have fun with it (70 Feet).
I will try to keep you guys posted on my progress .
Note the STL files are not complete and its a work in progress . Enjoy
Can anyone let me know how to download my pics and video - I cannot seem to find a way to do it plus I keep getting Mav_CMD(526) Command not supported when I try to reformat the SD card .
Thanks
Hi Guys - I am using samsung 18650 (6) but was wondering if there is any batteries out there with a better form factor to save some space in my 250 mm arcylic tube . Any heads up will be highly appreciate
Hi @Spinorose -
You can absolutely use 18650s in your sub, they are what we use in our standard battery packs. Youâll want to make sure you donât over-charge or discharge them to unsafe voltage levels!
For your earlier question about accessing videos and pictures - what device are you trying to access them on? If recording pictures and videos with QGround Control they are stored on your machine, not the vehicle, under Documents / QGroundControl / VideoâŚ
Basically what you are saying the mircoSD card that I put in the raspbery Pi does not hold any of the videos or pictures . I though putting in a bigger mircoSD was going to hold all that data.
correct me if I am worrg but what you are saying is all that microSD does is run the BlueOS image .
Hi @Spinorose !
Thatâs correct, the microSD card in the Raspberry Pi only runs BlueOS. Any extensions you install, or in some cases sonar data you collect, is stored on the SD card. However the video stream is not stored locally!
I am back at this project again and was wondering if I can any suggesting on my end cap and wire loom . I want to try use and Acrylic end can with 3D printed (with standalone work epoxy to avoid water seeping) plus also to avoid using Epoxy fill in the end caps - Can someone please sugguest any parts from the blue Robotics store ? This is just a hobbyist Drone so not planing on doing extreme depths at this piont - Mostly this route give me more room to play with adjusting wires rather than expoxing the wires permenently . Any suggestion will be highly appreciated
Hi @Spinorose -
The WetLink Cable Penetrator is a great solution for your end-cap. When assembled properly, with the correct size for your cable, it works to 1000m and yet is quite cheap!
I struggled with 3D printed, epoxy filled enclosure end-cap flanges many years ago, and found only limited success at depths less than 2 metersâŚ
The Blue Robotics locking enclosure configurator will set you up with all the parts you need!
Hi Fam - Can someone kindly help me out on how to wire led to my pixhawk to control two led by using this led driver board which is a 3w to a 5w led . basically I will have 10 watt total led power
List item
can I parallel the led drive to get more watts out of them ? so 3 of the driver to get close to 9 watt to be controlled my one PWM signal .
Hi @Spinorose -
Unfortunately that driver board doesnât seem to accept âservo styleâ PWM signal, and so will not be compatible with a PixHawk - not without potentially modifying some firmware parameters - however the 20,000 hz required may be higher than the system will be able to produce.
Generally itâs a bad idea to try and parallel driver boards, as slight differences in their output voltage will lead to currents flowing where they shouldnât be, damaging components. Is more documentation or a link to the hardware youâre trying to use available?
I just did an an update on my pixhawk from 4.1.2 to 4.5.1 and now it will not connnect via usb anymore - the computer see the usb but neither QC nor Misson planner will communication with the pixhawk . I need desperate help - I had to revert back to 4.1.2 on my fmuv2 for some reason it will not work with the 4.5.1.
So from what I am gathering I can manipute the RC9 pulse width to make the Led driver board, all I have to work by playing around with the pulse width? - I really appreciate your help to finish my project .Thanks
You havenât provided much description of your LED driver (in terms of what it is or how itâs expected to operate). If itâs a direct drive module that just uses a PWM duty cycle to determine the proportion of on/off time (as a way of setting LED brightness) then the frequency range is just allowable inputs, in which case the default frequency of any of the outputs is likely fine (since it will be within the region specified in your datasheet screenshot). That said, you may wish to adjust the PWM frequency, or your camera framerate, or apply some kind of notch filtering in the camera if you notice your video is flickering due to a poor match with the lights driving frequency.
Exactly, assuming your LED driver is just directly using the input signal as a switch (rather than trying to interpret it and convert it into something else )
Most likely the update failed. Itâs possible your Pixhawk is one of the models a problem with the silicon layout, in which case youâll need to use the Pixhawk1-1M firmware instead of the standard Pixhawk1 one (for ArduPilot firmware >= 4.2).
Note that we havenât tested that with Sub, so itâs possible there are some expected features missing in current versions. It may be preferable to stay on 4.1 until weâve managed to look into this more - weâve recently found this issue is affecting more boards than were initially thought, so weâre intending to do some actual testing of Pixhawk1-1M to make sure it supports the expected standard ArduSub features. At the moment itâs possible it doesnât work for our Celsius temperature sensor, and may not work for DVLs - Iâm unsure about anything else.
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