Introducing the Ping360 Scanning Sonar and Updated M200 Motor

General Discussion
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Originally published at: Introducing the Ping360 Scanning Sonar and Updated M200 Motor - Blue Robotics

Hello everyone! Today we have two new products to announce: the Ping360 Scanning Imaging Sonar and the updated M200 Motor! We’ve put together a launch video for the Ping360 and you can read about both products below.

The Ping360 Scanning Imaging Sonar

The Ping360 sonar is a mechanical scanning sonar. It’s designed primarily to be used on the BlueROV2 and other ROVs for navigation in low-visibility water conditions, but it’s also suited for applications such as inspection, obstacle avoidance, target location and tracking, autonomous systems development, and more!

When mounted on an ROV, the Ping360 gives you a top-down view of the ROV’s surroundings. You can see echoes from objects like ropes, walls, dock pilings, rocks, shipwrecks, boats, and any other structures or objects that reflect sound waves. With that, you have reference points to navigate from, regardless of water visibility, and you can locate important features in the water quickly.

The Ping360 image overlaid on a top-down shot to illustrate how the sonar aids in navigation in low visibility.

Like our Ping Echosounder, the Ping360 interface with the open-source Ping Viewer application to provide a realtime view of sonar data. The sonar also has an open communication interface so that you can grab the data directly for other applications.

The Ping360 is available today for $1,975 USD, less than half the price of any other scanning sonar on the market! You can read more about it on the product page here.

Updated M200 Motor

We have an exciting update to one of our earliest products, the M200 Motor.

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The updated M200 Motor has a stainless steel base, a solid overmolded stator, and, unlike the original version, 1 m (40 in) of cable. It’s super flexible and can be used in a wide variety of applications such as custom thrusters, surface vessel propulsion, pumps, gear drives, and more. We put together a 3d printed centrifugal pump to demonstrate one of the many ways that the M200 can be used.

3D printed centrifugal pump with the M200 motor.

Check out the product page for more examples and information.

That’s all for today! Thanks for reading and see ya next time!

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Your company is knocking it out of the park, can’t wait to get one.

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I’ve just opened the box and am playing with mine!

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I’ve been lucky enough to witness ping360 development firsthand, and have been testing prototype m200s for almost a year. It’s incredibly robust, works well when used with a potted encoder, and delivers every bit of the rated torque and power. I’ve seen it used in spur and worm based drive trains with great success, as well as coupled to impellers for miniature thrust applications. Well engineered!

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Hi, can you use the ping sonar and the ping360 at the same time in ping-viewer?

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Hi,

Right now this is only possible with two Ping-Viewers application running at the same time, we’re working to improve it in the near future.

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Hi Blue Robotics team,

very cool hardware you are presenting with this!!

I hope I´didn´t miss it in the descriptions but could you tell some information on scanning speed.
-Is it adjustable? (and by that has varying resolution?)
-How is the configuration/mode/speed if set to a smaller sector?

Thanks

Marc

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Hi @Marc, thanks for the questions!

First, we’ve been asked about this a few times so we’re going to add scanning speed to the product page specs. The current scan speed for a full 360 degree circle is about 8-9 seconds. We are hoping that we can get that down to 4-5 seconds with some software improvements (in Ping Viewer).

You can set it to scan at lower angular resolution, such as 1.8 deg steps instead of the normal 0.9 deg steps. That increases the scan rate proportionally.

When set to a sector less than 360 degrees, it scans back and forth within that sector so the update rate for the sector is pretty fast. The controls are at the top left of the interface and are pretty easy to use. We’re open to feedback and suggestions though!

-Rusty

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Thanks T :stuck_out_tongue:

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What are the various display options in Ping Viewer? Referring to differences in the below. Also, at what depth was the second image taken?

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The display options are the same as the Ping Echosounder:

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If you don’t like any of our pre-made ones, you can make your own custom color gradient (its pretty easy just by making a text file).

The image of the tire was around 14m deep.

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Right on, thanks Kev. I haven’t tinkered with any of the Ping stuff yet and wasn’t sure if the second image was something custom BR had done. It looks good. Do you have any screengrabs at greater distances from the floor?

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We don’t have any other screen captures or log files other than what we have on the product page and in the launch video. Although it will do bottom imaging, we wanted to focus more on the navigation aspect of the sonar.

Hopefully other customers will be able to share their experiences and images soon as we aren’t out on the water much right now.

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Hi guys,

Finally received my windows 10 laptop so I could test the ping 360 properly. As mentioned by support other versions of windows are not supported. I tried running it on windows 8 and it was hanging a lot.

Did a bench test for an hour and it worked well but still sometime hangs for a few seconds before it gets going again. This is without changing any settings at 2 m range. It did this maybe once every 10 minutes as far as I could tell.

Scanning is not smooth at increased range.

Is this something you have observed?

Other comments as mentioned in the email:

  • Having a scan reverse button for when the pilot needs to follow a target
  • Having the background solid black as an option
  • Adding measurement capabilities between two targets

Have a look at how I do this on my Oceancault - Recorder software when measuring items from video footage using laser references. (being that your scale is defined, this should be a lot easier.)

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But all in said, it looks like a very decent product at a price range many of us are happy with.

Looking forward to your next innovation. Hopefully in the thruster area :slight_smile:

Cheers,
E.

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We did a new test release (just now) that will help you with this issue, we are working to improve quality of life with new interface changes and features.

We have some ideas for future features here, be free to open new issues with features requests and problems.

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…looks perfectly good as i can see, looking forward to try it, but feel i have used allmost the same in Kongsberg when at work…, The newest i havernt seen on work so this is just as i hoped for :wink: Cheers guys!!!:wink: …recording we can also do in the meantime by a gamingrecorder :wink: i use that as a Blackbox too;) …split screen if needed ;)…but as Etienne says im All In :wink: …and yes Trusters? :wink: …got a Big frame looking for Big things :wink: