I am looking to build an open rov system but need it to go faster then the 2 knots that it comes stock. I am wanting to use it an a river application and afraid that the current will flush it down the river. I was thinking about putting the t200 thrusters in it and adding extra weight to the front?
Any ideas or suggestions?
One thing that you might be able to do without screwing with the weight that much is to streamline the shape on the front to give it a better cutting edge against the current. As it is now, the blunt edge on the pressure proof canister is going to have a lot of resistance acting upon the surface area that it presents.
One crazy idea would be to bend some think acrylic sheet and attach it to the side panels so you have like a rounded bow on the front of the piece. That will give you a little gain but without testing or flow modeling who knows for sure.
Duh!! You said Open Rov not BlueRov. Ok, they do have the cylinder sideways and that is already presenting a round surface.
Frankly strap some more thrusters on that thing 
Have you considered making your own hull shape and using stuff like the pressure proof enclosures that are in the store here to put your goodies in? I could see going nuts and having two 4 inch enclosures on the side with a basic catamaran shape. The side enclosures could have your batteries etc. in it and thrusters mounted on the walls of those pieces … then have the two enclosures connected with a flat panel and a two inch enclosure with a clear round dome piece on the front of it. That could be your LED lights and camera etc.
With enough thrusters and power you can push anything through the water.
Cool man, thanks for the advice.
Is there anything special I need to do for power. I was thinking just adding extra batteries and splicing the controller wire from the cpu to two, maybe three thrusters.
I am extremely new to this and just basically given a challenge from work to figure out how to do some underwater inspections. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Hi Ryan,
You can add T200 Thrusters but there are a few things to think about:
The T200s are quite a bit heavier than the stock thrusters. You can add weight to the front for balance but they the whole vehicle will be heavy and sink. It’s better to add foam for buoyancy to counter the additional weight. Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot of room on the OpenROV to do this.
To get full thrust from the T200s you’ll need higher voltage and higher discharge battery packs. The 9.6V packs in the OpenROV kit will only give you partial thrust. The T200 gets full thrust around 16V. Also, the max discharge rate of the OpenROV packs is not very high so I’d recommend switching to lithium polymer or another battery chemistry capable of high discharge rates. You’d have to figure out how to squeeze those batteries into the system as well.
The stock ESCs with the OpenROV are not sufficient for the full power of the T200.
Like Harold suggested, I would think about using the OpenROV electronics but building a new frame and power system more suited to your requirements.
I hope that helps out! Happy to help with any more questions you might have.
-Rusty