OpenROV Dockyard Reef Dive - Sept 7
Diving 10 years ago 2,028 views
This is a compilation of the some of the highlights of my dive with the OpenROV. The purpose was to try and navigate around a section of this reef to try and look in any holes that might contain dinner, er. I meant lobsters :) I was pleasantly surprised to see all the fish posing for the camera. I thought that they would have disappeared. Footage was shot a combination of a GoPro and a screen capture using Quicktime (on a Mac) of the OpenROV cockpit. You will see that I had a bit of condensation occurring after checking out the hole. There was a bit of lag with the OpenROV that will be fixed in the next software updated (currently running image 2.5-48) Tether buoyancy is the name of the game. The OpenROV's tether got caught and I had to go in to free it off of a couple rocks. You see a couple floats towards the end of the video, I didn't space the floats as well as I should have further down the tether. Music: UB40 - Don't Let It Pass You By
Hey,
The OpenROV on its own probably won't be able to shoot the HQ video that I believe you are seeking, just from the on board camera. The OpenROV to HQ video is just as some of the aerial drones with FPV cameras. You would have to add a HQ video camera to the OpenROV and come up with a waterproof gimbal to keep your footage steady. I've seen several gimbals that use brushless motors. The OpenROV uses exposed brushless motors to drive, so I would imagine the gimbals should work underwater, with the appropriate waterproofing of the electronics. Just my assumption!
Tether (the cable) management is always a concern with any underwater ROV. This tether is quite small and doesn't add a lot of drag and external forces to the ROV.
The OpenROV in its current state is rated to dive down to 100meters, but it one must be cautious and do some testing before pushing it that deep on its first dive. Another thing to consider is the amount of light that is at depth. Here is a video at ~200ft (~61m) OSF Deep Culling Team
Hope this helps!
Thanks a lot for your reply, it really helps me. The big question is: is the OpenRov good enough to shoot high quality video under water? How deep it can reach and is it not a big problem to handle the cable? I think the cable must be a big problem when you try to get into caves or wrecks...
In my video, the very clear video is from my GoPro and the other footage is from the onboard webcam. Some of the shakiness in my video might be from how I was driving it and that I had a high center of gravity. I was controlling the ROV from the keypad, which allows you to set a thrust level (on a scale of 1 to 5) and then use the arrow keys.
I just got a gamepad with analog joysticks, but I have not gone diving with it yet. The joysticks should give it more of a smooth ride. If you are looking to do underwater videography, you would probably need to hook up a gimbal of some sort.
Let me know if you have any other questions!