Disclaimer: I would probably recommend skipping this adventure because there is nothing to look at, other than a fish at 8:18.
I went to Soda lake yesterday just to see what it’s like. I know that it isn’t really zero visibility, but I’m OK calling it zero because there were several times that I was annoyed that the Ping was giving me a clearly false depth reading with 100% confidence, but it turns out that I was within the minimum range from the bottom and had no idea because I couldn’t see it. Looks like the high water level is about 20 feet higher than it is right now.
I added my GoPro Hero 4 Silver to the front and I’m not sure how to handle the 2 video views. I could just burn the subtitles on the GoPro video and just use 1 video view at a time. I’m shocked at how much better the GoPro camera is at seeing things in the murky water compared to the BlueROV2 camera. I usually could not see the muddy bottom on the video stream, but it’s easy to see on the GoPro.
The only problem encountered was that a Ping Viewer window suddenly closed itself at 19:23, but wasn’t a big deal since I easily opened a new one and it instantly reconnected. One of the primary things I love about the Ping360 is that it allows me to see the exact angle I am from the shore slope and even lets me accurately fly parallel to it while being some distance away.
I switched my sun shield from a tarp for a heavy moving blanket and it works a lot better since it blocks all of the light and doesn’t flap around in the wind. My control setup is just a dry box with my laptop, external battery, and an external monitor attached to the dry box lid with heavy duty double sided tape.
