Hi all
Looking for recommendations for a USBL for BlueROVs.
We have a waterlinked DVL and still use QGC, but are considering the move to cockpit. We want a USBL that integrates as best as possible with this hardware/software, while delivering good positional accuracy.
Any recommendations are welcome. Particularly interested in perceptions of waterlinked vs seatrac vs sonardyne nano.
Many thanks
Joe
Have you seen Waterlinkeds SBL?
Works fine up to 200m +
Have not tried integration with DVL
Thanks.
Yes I’m aware of GPS G2 Kit. It seems a logical piece of kit given we already have the waterlinked DVL. Just looking to hear people’s experience of using it in real life.
G’day everyone,
I have only ever used the Waterlinkd UGPS with the old version of the BlueROV2 and it met our needs. I have used two of these systems and I would buy another system if ever needed. I have not used the UGPS systems for more than a year so I am not current on any improvements made in the meantime.
That said, in my experience, there are some things to consider before making your choice.
Accuracy of the system can be poor on a small lively boat in rough conditions, particularly at maximum range. Accuracy in our case was adequate but poor because the GPS antenna was more than 9m above the acoustic array and we could not correct for pitch and roll. Post deployment corrections can be made if you keep high resolution pitch/roll data from an external GPS system however live position data is degraded.
It also took a bit of tweaking to get it to work with an external GPS system (we found the embedded GPS to be unreliable in our location) however it worked well once the external GPS was configured.
The user interface was also difficult to use and a bit limited. I am hoping this has changed with Cockpit and BlueOS. We found it easier to send position data to an external computer and chart plotter for viewing.
The acoustic array is also relatively fragile in rough conditions and if it needs to be left in the water when the boat is underway. The folding clamp bracket at the bottom bends easily and this allows the hydrophone arms to move around which further reduces accuracy. Both of our clamp brackets ended up breaking completely.
Kind regards
Jason
We have a couple of Tritech Micron USBL systems that have built in AHRS systems to correct for the vessel motion and will integrate a third party GPS. The system will output a GGA / GLL string via UDP that would be compatible. There is a limitation of only being able to track one beacon at a time when using the GGA output vs TP2 since there is no beacon address in the message. If you really want the total integrated solution checkout EIVA MOBULA it will integrate all of the control and sonar data in one package.