I went back to Lake Chelan since it looks like the weather will get bad soon and I wanted at least 1 more dive there this year.
The Ping sonars did their usual thing where they work when they work, and the rest of the time they don’t work. The Ping1D stopped working basically immediately after launching, and the Ping360 quit working about 12:45 in the video. I heard that there might be a second car somewhere below the jeep, but I didn’t see any signs of one.
I then ended the dive to restart the ROV to try to get the sonars working, but Ping Viewer couldn’t detect either one for the rest of the day. I even restarted both Ping Viewer windows and unplugged the USB tether interface. I continued the adventure regardless and went down to 200 feet since this is my only dive site that gives me the opportunity to go that deep. I turn the lights off at about 195 feet (about 11:16 in the video) and see that there still is a little ambient light that far down. I then find a huge rock wall at about 23 minutes, which was surprising because it’s a sudden change of the terrain.
The 3rd dive was just messing around to use my remaining laptop battery power. I tried to play with the group of bass, and at about 18:30 I had some fun and tried to do a low level ascent over the slope. It was fun to fly because I held the vertical thrusters at full power and then used the forward thrusters to adjust altitude. I thought the backlit rocks made a cool video.
Both sonars seemed to work flawlessly as soon as I got back home and powered it on to test it, which wasn’t surprising.
Hi @btrue! Thanks for continuing to share your adventures
The issues you are having with the Ping and Ping360 are not normal. Would you mind sending us an email at support@bluerobotic.com? We believe it may be an issue with the software, but seeing what your gui log looks like would help us!
I will send the e-mail. I understand the all of the Ping products are in Beta and I’m fine being a Beta Tester and dealing with a few issues as long as they are eventually smoothed out as the products mature.
One of the reasons why I love sharing my adventures is so that experienced people can call me out on the mistakes I make and let me know when things are abnormal, because I can’t find any affordable ROV pilot training so I’m teaching myself.
Thanks, @btrue! Our beta testers are what helps to bring our products to a stable condition, so the more feedback, the better. We will await your email!
Nice looking dive! I’m planning on doing a 400m test dive up in the Lucerne Basin area of the lake next year, maybe I’ll see you there! For anyone who doesn’t know, Lake Chelan has a max depth of ~1400 feet, which is right off the shore line. Makes for a great test area.
One of my long term goals is to explore the very bottom of Lake Chelan, though I don’t know if I actually ever will since it would be expensive to upgrade the ROV to that level.
Hi @btrue! i really enjoyed watching your video above.
Sorry i am new to this experience and especially with BlueRov2. But how do you display all information bellow your screen as seen in your video (i.e depth, heading, roll, lights, date etc). I can only seen mine on the right hand side of the screen but not embeded like yours in full screen.
@PatRam I have the same setup as yours. The embedded information is the subtitles that QGroundControl makes when I record the video stream. I recently answered this question on another post: Potholes Reservoir, Washington - #6 by btrue
You desperately need a boat to launch from. I cringe every time your ROV gets dragged across the rocks…lol.
Perhaps two kayaks with a frame arched between them, with the ROV dangling between, lowered with an ATV winch?
My ROV (stolen) was intended to be launched from a custom-built pontoon boat, inside a negatively-buoyant tether-management cage. The cage gets lowered to depth, then the ROV is released to roam on 200+ feet of tether.
No sliprings on the topside tether spool or the tether-management spool down below, they use a (modern fishing reel style) baling arm where the spool is fixed, and the tether is wound on/off. The tether is just quad-shield coax, both the cage and ROV run on 18650 Li-Ion batteries.
Yes, I’m aware of the existence and benefits of those ROV cages, but it’s not an option for me right now since I’m limited by the amount of stuff that fits inside my Camry and what I can carry and use all by myself. I’m considering getting a 60 Lbs. outboard and a wide inflatable boat, but it might be too heavy for me to move around by myself.
$1250 for the boat, + $200 for the Triton option, (whatever that is), and $150 shipping. That could be a total of $1,600.00 ,and the boat is only 11’ long, inflatable so when Mr Murphy visits it sinks better.
The Toyota Camry has a factory-recommended towing capacity of 1000 lbs (2000 lbs w/trailer brakes). If you have a 4cyl you’d need the trailer to be very aerodynamic.
I’ve got a design for a hyper-expandable pontoon boat, but i’m not sure if i could build it light enough that the Camry could tow it.
Buy a used Toyota 4runner off craigslist or eBay for under $1000. Try to get the 3.4V6. Or drag one down from Canada that has a diesel in it. Better torque/ fuel economy.
My pontoon boat design is a cabin style, so you don’t freeze yer bum off in the winter. It expands upwards as well as sideways, going from 6.5’ wide to 16’ wide, and 6.5’ tall going down the road to an 8’ cabin height on the water. My original design is 28’ max legal trailer length for a 14’x14’ control room, 4’x14’ for separate kitchenette/ bathroom spaces, and 10’x14’ for the moon pool/ ROV launch room (that has a double-gantry overhead crane to lower the ROVs). Intended to be towed with my heavily-upgraded 1984 Toyota 4x4 pickup.
The trailer/ boat could be shortened to 20’ long, especially with the new double-expanding floor and roof design that gets alot wider than my original design.
Gimme a week to throw together a 1/8th scale model. I’ll start a thread in the build section to see what people think about it.
