I finished the build of the OpenROv a couple weeks ago, and you can see the video I made about bucket testing the shell after the break!

Took the ROV and threw it in the pool the next day, and encountered 3 problems:

– No Ballast: The ROV needs more weight than just the nuts from the kit to ballast it, so I’m going to grab some hardware from work and get it ballasted.

– Motor Calibration: The speed controllers are clearly not set up correctly, because the ROV was going full speed in some really weird directions when I tried to move it around in the pool. I’m going to have to go back and re-do the calibration section of the instructions, and maybe take a look in the arduino code if that doesn’t work.

– Tether – I didn’t add a zip tie to keep the tether going straight out of the back of the vehicle, and it really bit me because the tether got sucked into one of the thrusters and damaged. Tried to find a connector I could splice in to make the tether interchangeable, but couldn’t so I’m going to just cut out the damaged section and solder in a patch.