I have an interest in ROV’s(have yet to build or buy one just yet), and just recently, that got me thinking that it would be pretty cool to build a small scale RC submarine(preferably one that I can use in a pool, pond, or lake). In thinking about it further, I was thinking it would be pretty cool to have some war games with scale RC subs and boats(planning for them to be scale speed with FPV).
I was wondering, are there any small scale sonar systems that you know of that can pick up a small RC crafts. Since they’ll be operating not far from the surface and at a short distance, I plan to utilize standard radio equipment without a tether, so there’s no tether that should interfere with readings.
Hi there, there are sonars that could pick up items this size, but sonars are typically very expensive (starting around $5k) compared to other hobby gear.
Another problem is that you can’t penetrate water with rf to pilot a vehicle or get the sonar data back to the pilot. You will need a tether.
There’s been a lot of talk on the subject over the years, but I haven’t seen anything done. The first problem is that there’s no api or publicly available protocol documentation on those things.
As a bare minimum, could you just run the data going to the LCD up to the surface? That seems like something you could do with a nano arduino and a twisted pair?