Evolution of the OpenROV
The idea to build OpenROV was pioneered by Eric Stackpole, an engineer at NASA at the time, to discover whether the legend about the hidden treasure of the Hall City Cave was true.
According to the legend, a few renegade Native Americans stole ~100 pounds of gold nuggets from miners in the 1800s, but were chased. To escape from the pursuit, the renegades had to bury the nuggets in deep waters of the nearby Hall City Cave to lighten their load, but could not retrieve the gold, because they were soon caught and hanged. Even though many have tried to find the gold, nobody has been able to get to the bottom of the narrow and deep well of the cave.
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
David Lang, a self-taught sailor from Minnesota, heard about Stackpole building a small, cheap, and robust submarine in his garage to search for the gold and became inspired to join. Matteo Borri designed and built the electronics, software and motor system for a prototype presented at the World Maker Faire in 2011. Lang and Stackpole co-founded OpenROV as an open- source hardware project as a start- up company, and a DIY community.
OpenROV
The OpenROV (figure 1) with a weight of 2.6 kilograms is an example of a Micro Class ROV which is an affordable ROV available assembled or in kit form
The submarine is controlled from a laptop computer connected to the submarine via a tether and is equipped with on-board Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and a camera. OpenROV is an open-source hardware project. By providing the list of the submarine parts and instructions on how to assemble them, the
68 | The Report • December 2018 • Issue 86
developers aim to democratize underwater exploration.
OpenROV connects to your computer via the tether and uses an Ethernet protocol. You can access the ROV cockpit via web
browser software (Google Chrome). Flight controls are also simple. You can use either your computer’s keyboard or a gamepad controller to pilot the vehicle during a dive. You can document all your dives by recording the video stream.
OpenROV specifications (for full details see reference 3)
• Maximum depth of 100m (328ft) • Maximum forward speed of 2 knots • Live HD video is streamed to the surface control unit over an ultra- thin two-wire tether
• Internal LED Lighting with a brightness of 200 Lumens • External LED Lighting with a maximum brightness of 1400 lumens • Water Temperature operational capability is between -10C to 50C • Software controlled camera tilt (+/- 60 deg from center) • Tether neutrally buoyant in fresh water
Instrumentation • Camera supporting HD live video stream in-browser recording of video • IMU / Depth Sensor for navigation telemetry such as depth, heading, pitch and roll
• Microprocessors for a flexible and powerful developer platform with dozens of input/output channels and plenty of computing power for user-designed features and experiments
• Scaling lasers for size reference during a dive (parallel, 10 cm separation)
• Current and voltage protection with feedback to ensure proper system function
• Communications channel and power for external instrumentation • Payload area for mounting additional hardware or equipment (170g max payload without adding floatation).
Picture courtesy OpenROV Figure 1: Micro Class OpenROV
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