Wireless Connection instead of Tether?

Blue Robotics Software
1

Would it be possible to go wireless and ditch the tether?

2

Not if you want to have live video. At least not at the moment.

3

When will it be available?

4

Hi @tp3208 ,

What are you trying to do? Acoustic modems are slow and the only reasonable means of transmitting video wirelessly through water is through an underwater optical modem, of which there is only one commercial device that I know of: BlueComm.

5

I am thinking of modding a BlueROV2 to use for the RoboSub competition. Since our budget is low, we are thinking of using this as first year plan. We would program the sub to complete certain challenges and then use the wireless system to debug the code live. Actually I have another question. Would it be possible to mod the BlueROV and then add our own code? Like if we wanted to make the sub follow a line on the bottom of the sea floor. Would the hardware/electronics allow it? Or are they locked to the just the programs that are preinstalled?

6

You can try experimenting with this. For the remaining questions, I suggest you look through the rest of the ArduSub documentation and our GitHub repositories.

1 Like
7

You can debug the code live with a tether! Just take it off for the competition.

8

I guess

9

All of the software that runs on the ROV is open source and can be modified. More than one robosub team have used our ROVs and ArduSub in the past.

10

Ok thanks. Since we are a school group, is there any discount? We have a very limited budget that can almost pay for the BlueROV2 (we are short a couple hundred dollars).

11

@tp3208 Please send a Quote Request to us and we can work with you for an educational discount.

12

While radio waves don’t penetrate water well, blue light might work. Looking at Wikipedia 420nm laser diodes are in the area of maximum penetration for light through water. I was toying with the idea of mounting a blue laser on the sub and pointing it up where a buoy with a receiver might be able to monitor it. I would hope that a fairly wide field of view and diffusion would make the spot visible even with some rocking motion from the sub. It might allow video or at least pictures to be returned from a tether-less sub to a depth around 100’ / 30m. Pure speculation on my part but could make a nice experiment.

As noted if you just want to be able to program the sub when on the surface or out of the water then any Bluetooth or WiFi solution will work. Below the water though radio waves don’t travel far and the common communication mode is acoustic and it’s slow.