Hi everyone,
I’m planning to design an ROV, but I’m not a professional.
For the enclosure, I want to use a single housing for both the battery and electronics. The ROV will be longer than the BlueROV2, but with a lower profile (height).
What are the pros and cons of this approach?
Thanks!
Hi @umut -
Welcome to the forums!
A design like that should work great!
Pro -
Fewer connections between enclosures
Less frontal drag area
Con -
Heat of battery may impact overall electronics temperature
Fitting components in enclosure may be difficult!
If turning on via manual battery connection, opening of main electronics in the field is riskier than opening just a battery housing
That’s what comes to mind for me, off the top of my head! Best of luck
We do this with the cpsdrone drone builds. It works but is not without its issues. As the previous commenter said heat and space are the biggest hurdles.
With the cps you only have 5 motors and and therefore not as much control and battery life is about 45-60 mins using a self built or purchased pack made from 18650 batteries. I can say I enjoyed my build but am seriously considering just getting a bluerov. It was about 1000 us to get everything to build the cps drone using a 100 ft cat 5 ethernet as the tether. What Ive noticed though is its slower, harder to control, still uses 1080 cam like the blue, and ultimately just has reliability issues. Even after going back into the electronics repetitively for repairs. I am not an electronics wizz by any means but have dabbled in rc for many years to I am fairly competent. I have had multiple solder failures that are likely from to much heat in the electronics pipe and have had to replace props more than once as well (to be fair they are 3d printed so not very strong).
I am not trying to say not to build by any means, just some food for thought. When you go shallow in height you end up pulling debris up into motors if you get close to the bottom which is easy to do when you are trying to get good video. Going with one pipe can save cost and space but at the expense of heat distribution assuming you are using acrylic not aluminum. Now you could go single pipe but larger diam and get past some of that issue. If your placing your camera in the same tube done underestimate the space needed for the camera especially if you are going to have servo control.
Lastly by all means keep us posted, inquiring minds want to know about the successes and the failures. You never know what experience you share will help others make a connection or save some heartache.