You have 6 T200 thrusters to power. I have only 3 T100 thrusters on my ROV and I use three 3S 5000 LiPo batteries, which is adequate but not great for my ocean work. If you are going to stay in a pool or calm lake environment, you could probably run the BlueROV with three 4S 5000’s, but I would think that is a minimum. Others on here that have a BlueROV can give you better advice.
Consider how you are going to fit the batteries into the water tight enclosure (WTE), that is not a trivial consideration. Also, how will you connect the batteries to the thrusters, that also takes some thought.
Make sure the Mega 2560 is not too large to fit, along with the batteries you end up using.
SDA and SCL pins are for controlling the thrusters using I2C. If you are going to use PWM, you don’t use those pins. When you start adding sensors you will use them.
To counter Richard’s response a bit, we have powered the BlueROV1 fairly frequently with a 5000 mAh battery. Granted, you won’t have very long endurance but a high discharge battery (25C or better) can supply sufficient current.
Sir can i use your same code to connect the PWM to my arduino and gnd pin also? I mean will my blueESC work fine with the same code?
Currently I have wired the blue ESC PWM to arduino pwm and blueEsc gnd to arduino grnd and powered the thruster by 4s lipo batters now i just want to upload the sketch in arduino.
will your code work fine of BLDC motor with blueESC or does to initiate my blueESC i have to do diffent procedure?
Sir I have a gamingpad which has a usb port. How can i connect the usb port to my arduino since there is no usb port in arduino mega 2560. Do i have to stip the usb port and take out the pins or is there any cheap usb module of arduino avaliable?
This is the version that I have and I am pretty much clear on programming of taking serial values from joystick and assigning PWM accordingly but the main issue that I am currently facing is the connection of usb gamepad to my arduino. How can i do that ?
It’s not easy to connect a USB joystick to an Arduino. If you want to do that, then I’d recommend connecting the USB joystick to your computer and use a script on your computer to send commands to the ROV through the serial port. You don’t need an Arduino on the topside at all for that configuration.
If you want to use the Arduino, then you’ll be better off with analog joysticks like those that Richard is using.
Rusty firstly I would like to highlight the fact that all my 6 t200 thrusters are working fine on lipo 4s 40C.
Thanks for all the help up til now. The thrusters are moving in both directions and stopping also as i required them from my arduino board.
Next step that I want to do is to have a joystick/gamepad/x box controller or anything similar that can be connected to my arduino. There are few things that i want to highlight before you give me suggestions:
I want my rov to manuever about 40 meters in the water ie the joytick cable has to be 40 m whereas my arduino and thrusters are powered by the lipo battery that is placed inside the glass bottle but there is just a single wire coming out from the 40 m depth which is of my joystick controlling the manuevers of my rov.
Which joystick should I buy? How can i connect it to arduino? If all connections are done so i am capable enough to write a good code for controlling the thrusters from the serial values that I will be receiving from my joystick to arduino serial monitor.
Great details of joystick and wire required since I am working on arduino.
If you want to connect directly from your computer then I’d recommend a Logitech 310 or similar gamepad controller.
You can read it with a script on your computer, such as a Python script, and then send the joystick commands through serial to the ROV. I can’t help you too much with actually doing that, but I’d recommend googling for tutorials on Python joystick and serial commands.
If you want to use your Arduino on the topside, the I would recommend the Parallax joysticks that Richard linked to. You can follow the Parallax instructions to connect them. They have a well-documented manual.
Alright I have a similar gamepad. Now i got it that I have to connect the usb gamepad to my laptop and read script from my computer and then send the commands to ROV that great and fine.
Another query that i wanted to know is if i am done with interfacing gamepad to laptop and also getting the required values from my gamepad how can i transmit the values to the arduino board?
How to do serial communication(transmitting values from pc to arduino) between laptop to arduino(ROV) ?
There are many tutorial online about how to communicate between a computer and an Arduino through serial. Please search for those and then let us know if you have any specific questions.
I am thinking to get the Fantom S board now, to resolve my camera and joystick problem and Cat 5 wire too.
can i directly connect my arduino joystick module to fantom S board? or I have to get a usb gamepad and send data through python conversion? Or bath features are avaliable on fanthom S board ?
