i think part of the issues have to do with inherent features of the lake bottom - as a low-energy environment with almost no current, the sediment will consist almost entirely of silt, clay, and fine-grained biologically-generated material. this has the effect of: 1. making it harder to drive as you'll tend to stir it up and sink in, and 2. meaning that any sediment stirred up will take a long time to settle out, so driving will inevitably make it very cloudy. btw that smell of lake sediment is often due to methane bacteria :)
While I agree, notice the lack of actual imprints from the tracks? Those tracks help spread the weight out enough to minimize that. I think this is a good starting point for submariner rovers.
I used to go kayaking in the local canal with the Scouts and you could prod the mud with your paddle and a load of foul-smelling bubbles would come out.
Maybe a screw tank would be better in this environment, because it never has to double back on itself like tracks or wheels do. All sides of the screw will give forward thrust. Screws will even give you thrust without touching the bottom.
This was a great project! I have two suggestions. 1. Use a compass to get an idea of the direction you are pointing. 2. Strap a "safety balloon" with a co2 cartridge to it and inflate the balloon if you get stuck. If you do it right, it will stay upright and lift the top of the tracks above the water so that you can use the tracks to "paddle" back to shore.
Would a compass work okay under water? Also surrounded by those two motors? I thought he should use a gyrometer or something to keep an idea of orientation but it would eventually build up some error.
This is a great concept ! Once again your crazy contraption is amazing ! My suggestion for “version two” would be to have a larger surface barge and a small additional spring loaded cable with an electric winch to lift the underwater rover in case it gets stuck or fouled in the weeds.
I agree with you,plus it'll be nice if he added propullsion motors motor like a sub one or two just in case he got stuck underwater i think that would be a great help.
@@petavaverka water would still get in but then it could more efficiently generate thrust against the way you are going. Now im curious. If anybody has an answer please let me know.
The raft should have enough buoyancy to lift the rover with a winch for either a cable or directly to the communication wire. Maybe a couple of motors to raft with propellers attached to retrieve. Though this would be somewhat over engineered.
01:22, you can make PLA waterproof if you put it in aceton vapor, the walls melt down and create a glossy plastic finish which seals all the layers together like a molded plastic.
As far as day to day environments go there really isn't a more destructive one then the marine one. its ability to silently destroy has to be admired in the endless ways it attacks systems haha. Keep up the work man, you make me wish I never stopped building and experimenting with theses things.
Hey Daniel ! For the video signals you definitly should use coaxial cables. It will have a "shield" functionality and will prevent the video from being jammed by the other signals such as power or ESCs. As it's low speed signal you don't care about impedance and can use both 50 or 75ohm cable. There are some really thin ones available. All you have to do is solder the signal on the inner line and GND on the shield on both sides (rover and barge). Hope it helps !
Yes using a coaxial cable is the proper thing here, but as far as I am aware the signal from the FPV camera is composite video. Composite video was designed for use with standard FM/Broadcast TV coax which is 75 ohm. It's possible it will work fine on 50 ohm, but it's supposed to be 75 ohm. 75 ohm also happens to be the most available and in some cases cheaper than 50 ohm. My recommendation for him would be RG-59, for the 40 foot tether, the video signal and cable structure should be plenty strong. Like you said, make sure you ground the outer shield. Particularly at the camera and transmitter, not just any power ground as ground current could actually cause a similar interference problem.
Also secondarily, run the video signal as a parallel tether, not shared with the power cables (That's what's causing the interference, not the 5V PWM signal, the battery power creating a magnetic field.) Also...batteries in the robot itself will minimize or eliminate most of the weight of the tether, while also acting as weight to keep the robot at the bottom, and will allow you to use a smaller BEC circuit to power the surface equipment, and keep the surface float smaller. There's some stuff regarding UUVs that is significantly different from normal RC stuff, because of tether lengths. You'll have a LOT of power loss over the length of the tether. Ideally, you want to use the minimum number of wires in the tether possible. For that, I recommend just the camera+ground, and 4-wire serial connecting two controller boards (One translating the receiver's 2-3 channels to serial, the other translating back to PWM) with a power booster every 50 feet along the tether. Batteries CAN be submerged if they're in waterproof boxes. I use Otterboxes, which can double as tether floats, and run my ROVs down on 200' tethers made of Ethernet cable.
If you need to waterproof, there is a product made by Lawson called LPA III. It's basically lanolin and parafin wax in a acetone solvent. When you spray it on electrical boards it waterproofs them. I've tested this for underwater operation. It's better than potting because it allows for heat dissipation and can be removed with a solvent safe for electrical boards. You could seal 3d prints with it as well.
0:43 So it's just you sir! Any video that you made was excellent and catch the attention easily. I bet that even a video about that RC in the snow would make any person like. Have a great day, don't overwork yourself, sir!
Awesome prototype! It would be really neat if the barge was RC as well, with a winch that could raise and lower the rover to help recover it or place it in specific areas
In the future for small amounts of moisture, you can buy silica gel cat litter for extremely cheap compared to the packets made for drying. Drop a few granules inside the “dry zone” and you’ll be good. I keep 3D filament in a big Tupperware tub with the silica litter sprinkled on the bottom because I live in FL and it’s swampy as hell, but the filament stays crazy dry! The stuff works incredibly well for how much you use. Literally a few granules would keep a housing like your camera dry. It’s useful stuff, you can use it for a ton of things you probably wouldn’t think about until you have it.
This is one of the most interesting projects I’ve seen recently, I’d never heard of those methods of waterproofing electronics before and I think underwater RC is just such an interesting concept! This makes me wonder how to build an underwater rock crawler and do some submerged off roading…
It's super easy, I do it...frequently... I'm known as a submarine driver among the crawling groups I'm in, because it's not unusual for me to drive my crawlers in 2-3 feet of water. I use waterproof potted air receivers with the peripheral antenna mounted on a long-snorkel (sitting 18" from the ground) so the most it gets is 18" under, which is right about where the Spektrum DSMX frequency starts to fail. I've gotten as much as 22" of water between the antenna and the radio and been in control, but it's spotty at that depth)
The ducks know predators won't eff with them if they're close to people. They figure people are less likely to hurt them, being big and slow and generally preoccupied.
If you want to 3D print waterproof things you must use ABS filament, is a bit tricky to print, you need an enclosure for the printer to keep the heat from the bed under control, ABS like to cool down slowly, after your print is ready, do a bath with acetone vapors to smooth the print and is ready, there are many videos of how to do the acetone vapor bath on youtube.
You are a crazy nerd! That is a genuine compliment by the way. It’s people like you who make the world go round and then explain how you do it to the rest of us. So cool in such a nerdy-geeky way. Thank you
I love the concept... the view driving across the bottom while exploring is for some reason more satisfying than the view from a submersible. I'm a scuba diver but the idea of "4 wheeling" on the bottom of a lake or sea, just seems cool. Well done
I found the bit about using mineral oil to flood the electronics pretty interesting. For the tank, i wonder if it would be feasible to turn it into a submarine hybrid which would allow it to get out of trick situations, by filling tanks with air and becoming buoyant.
This is a project that needs a revisit. How deep could you get the tank to work? A lot of this doesn't actually need to be water proof? Just keeping the sand out? Would a big floating barge with a solar panel be able to supply power for unlimited tank range? Also a nice long range antenna? Then take it to the beach and drive out through the surf to 30ft depth? Maybe large diameter wheels instead of tracks to keep it away from the sediment?
What a way to show how versatile your platform is! Also wanted to say that i'm completely in love with this seabed crawler idea and very impressed with your quick adaptations to make this thing not instantly die underwater. I would greatly enjoy followups for this branch of the project.
Absolutely awesome as always. I've always wanted to diy my own ROV. You should look into removing the mounted ballast weight, and look into making some sort of emergency cutaway balast. If you get stuck, or too deep you could flick a switch and float to the top, leaving the balast as a reasonable sacrifice. The hard part is making it water tight... If you use steel plates for your weight, you could use magnets mounted to actuators of some sort to engage/release. Then you can use a magnet on a rope and the blow up kayak to recover your weights. Just an idea for if you ever revisit this.
Submarines are cool and the FiFish looks pretty neat, but the idea of an aquatic crawler is so much more interesting to me - it's almost like driving on the moon. It might also be cool to tow some kind of camera-torpedo behind one of your boats, with a lil mechanism to reel it in as needed. Great stuff as always!
That was actually really cool. Would be cool to try to revisit this concept with a longer tether and a better barge that can take a beating and is more watertight, could also have solar on it. I wonder if there is a way to send/receive signals, telemetry, and video over ethernet. Like some kind of converter that puts everything in a a single cable. Could have a battery onboard but also use POE to trickle charge it on the fly.
The mineral oil being non conductive is really cool to know! If I remember correctly from my hvac classes you REALLY can’t use that stuff cause it eats away at the metal or something.... or mineral oil was good and the other option were terrible... I’m pretty sure it was the first though cause I can’t shake the feeling that mineral oil is awful because of some esoteric reason I can’t remember.... they threw ALOT at us each week in those classes.
Tremendous work guys, hats off to you! Huge value in the work you are doing, I bet it would have cost BAE big dollars to get this far. Talk about "agile engineering" - I think there's a lot the "big boys" could learn from your approach to getting things done. Keep on!
Hello rctestflight, love the video. For fixing your interference issues, I recommend using a wire with screened twisted pairs, then be sure to ground the screens. I work in the sensor industry, and we use these in all sorts of high interference environments, and they always work.
I made an underwater rover all the way back in 92, and I had the same problems with disturbing mud river bed as you, I used an RC tank for the base, and back then my camera was only 240p lol, at the start of this video I was thinking is he going to use a boat as I did for the tether. What inspired me to build it was an ROV that I controlled once on a deep sea selvedge ship I worked on, I keep thinking of building one again but with today's tech. Really cool video.
VERY cool concept, been a dream of mine to build/own something like this since I was a child, so cool! Maybe a longer tether and a boyant safety string attached to the barge/boat for emergency recovery as an upgrade? Would love to see more and deeper exploration!
What a great project - a huge learning curve 🙂 I used to work on Submersable ROVs - Have you considered using a perspex (or similar) dome to house your electronics, camera and lights in? Also how about a couple of thrusters to help you out when you get stuck. Well done on what you achieved - you do some amazing projects 🙂
Oh, this is so cool! You could add a motorized reel and make the barge basically an R/C boat. That would allow you to go deeper and hoist back up in deep water for the hills. Awesome job!
Important tip about making watertight 3D prints: use solvents. F.e. ABS washed by acetone becomes completely waterproof after drying and even can keep HP air (given the part has appropriate thickness). Super easy, doing that for years since 2015, always works.
Cool concept! Some electronics geek ideas: use differential, 2 wire signals for the video to get rid of that interference. Coax will not help much if the grounds are interconnected. Maybe a fluxgate compass module so you can know which direction it's going?
Hi there have done a lot of underwater printing. There are a few tips that can help you: 1. A little over extrusion wont hurt your prints. It will make parts more waterproof and you will also be able to use less infill. 2.Doing 100% fill is actually bad. With bad filament it can actually crack from inside and let water in. 3. Something weird i have done. I coverd most of my prints in silicon or component glues. Anyway after building a lot of desktop fauntains and water boats this is all i have to say hope it helps!!
Please do more underwater projects 🙏🏻 it's so facinating to see things explore the depths. There's so many things you can have fun with doing around the area that you are. You never know what you're going to find. A insta360 camera could create a really cool perspective as well.
You got one of the most useful sponsors around on this video... We're all sick of the dumb mobile game sponsors, VPNs and Vention. This one is actually a usable supplier for us hobby enthusiasts...
With all my fpv power wire I now wind in a common mode filter with a single ferrite donut just large enough to fit servo size wires in with 4 windings for both pos and neg. It's very light, very cheap and very effective. Also to make waterproof prints, print in ABS and use acetone vapour to join the layers together
Awesome stuff you’ve done here. As for using 3D printing for low-pressure watertight enclosures I’ve personally had success using extremely fine layer heights with vapor smoothing. (I use ABS with acetone, but you need a pretty big skirt so it doesn’t warp). I make the walls a little thicker, but you don’t need 100% infill. Where you’d like to screw in flat surfaces like that plexiglass you have to sand the plastic as flat as you can get it (which it looks like you’ve done here). Barrel sanding techniques work quite well. In order to make that process easier though I’d reccomend using some automotive water pump gasket material with a set of cheap gasket punches for the screw holes. Works wonders. Made everything from submersible enclosures to PC water blocks with this method. Best of luck!
Ok this is absolutely awesome, and I know it would be a lot of work but here's an idea so you can actually do some deep exploring and not have to worry so much about it getting stuck. You should build a bigger "barge" that is powered, and also has a powered reel on it so it can lift the aquacat up and out of the water, then you can simply drive the barge back to shore. I can't imagine it would be easy to get stuck and you wouldn't have to rely on traction or flat surfaces to make it back.
This is amazing. I imagine the submarine tank using your kayak tug as it’s surface support. Perpetual daytime power source. If the tank needs recovery, the tug drags it out on its own power. Add a 3D printed winch and it can even pull it up close to the surface.
This might be the coolest thing I've seen on this channel Possible improvements: Larger more buoyant/stable raft Heavier rover Lightly spring loaded reel to let out more tether as rover gets deeper, on raft
Awesome! Next time add a winch to the barge so it can pull the rover up! Better yet: ditch the barge, make it autonomous, and add a ballast tank so at the end of the mission (or if it gets stuck) it automatically floats itself to the surface!
Not even joking, this is the type of stuff I wish Mark Rober would do too. You are absolutely killing it my man, headed to watch your newest videos next
this is my first video of yours and i gotta say, you got yourself a new subscriber :) but i wanted to offer a tip: if for the mineral oil filled motors, you submerge everything and screw on the cover while submerged in a small container of mineral oil, you ill get 0 air bubbles (just a mess to clean up after when you take it back out)
Just keep in mind that the silt on the bottom of lakes is usually very loose and not compacted. It can't support any weight, it's like a liquid. I really like this project, very cool engineering 👍
an industrial quality version of this has so much potential... add on an arm for retrieving lost items and a system to reel in and out the cable from the "barge" for increased depth, maybe even a bouyancy tank for hi speed travel with props in gimballed direction control...
I have FDM printed water tight parts before, even without any coatings. I used ASA printed at 270-275 C and about 2-3% overflow compared to my normal flow. Also, certain slicing settings can create gaps, so you have to inspect and adjust as needed. DM me if you want more info. I made a large container than holds 5 L of water - no leaks after several months.
Ive played with this before, so some tips for you; - Stick the battery down in the rover to add weight; gives better traction, less noise. - Only feed the antennas up to the top, signal wires don't carry much noise. - Use a flipped PET soda bottle as a buoy, guaranteed 100% waterproof, can't flip over. - Antennas don't have to be outside the buoy, just make em point up. - Weigh the buoy down by gluing a giant ferrite ring around the neck. - Put a lightweight flagpole on the buoy, shows if you go too deep, easy to snag with grapple. ;) - Use a nylon rope as the tether core, puts less stress on the cables. - Add little floats to your tether, keep it off the ground or it will snag. - Glue a spherical compass to your rover, works better than electronic.
for RC underwater stuff i think having a rescue line on it at all times seems like a good idea.
just a rope and a yoga ball with a handel for bouncy but you need a kayak to go get it
Great idea you can get floating rope for throw lines that would work great from the floating part to shore. Then it won't tangle the rover
Maybe the float could have a winch on it as well as its own motor
@@listaro4128 Maybe some way to inflate a balloon to get it to float to the surface?
@@Oldsmobile69 CO2 canister and a balloon, yes indeed.
its a shame this is a limited project, I'd have liked to see this project develop a lot more, It's an awesome concept.
🎉😂
same but i don't blame him
i think part of the issues have to do with inherent features of the lake bottom - as a low-energy environment with almost no current, the sediment will consist almost entirely of silt, clay, and fine-grained biologically-generated material. this has the effect of: 1. making it harder to drive as you'll tend to stir it up and sink in, and 2. meaning that any sediment stirred up will take a long time to settle out, so driving will inevitably make it very cloudy.
btw that smell of lake sediment is often due to methane bacteria :)
While I agree, notice the lack of actual imprints from the tracks? Those tracks help spread the weight out enough to minimize that. I think this is a good starting point for submariner rovers.
I used to go kayaking in the local canal with the Scouts and you could prod the mud with your paddle and a load of foul-smelling bubbles would come out.
Maybe a screw tank would be better in this environment, because it never has to double back on itself like tracks or wheels do. All sides of the screw will give forward thrust. Screws will even give you thrust without touching the bottom.
@@TheAnoniemo brilliant. The sides would have to be counter rotating, I assume...
@@mike_oe Yes
I really want to try this with one of those spider robots underwater
FPV crab???
@@rctestflight yes sir
@@ruska9773spider crab 👍
I'm still waiting on the crab drone video!
@@unholyhardy4359he did make a flamethrower spider Thomas the tank engine so I think it’s ok if he doesn’t make an FPV crab
Also you can have a bobber on a shorter tether as deapth gage, so it gets pulled under before the main tether, then you know when to turn back
if you look closely he did that after the first test
It would be cool to attach a water sensor to the float to send back a telemetry signal if it gets pulled underneath
@ no that's different, that's a bit of foam to add buoyancy to the tether so it doesn't drag in shallow water
@@FowlerAskew or just put a wide range barometer on it
This was a great project! I have two suggestions.
1. Use a compass to get an idea of the direction you are pointing.
2. Strap a "safety balloon" with a co2 cartridge to it and inflate the balloon if you get stuck. If you do it right, it will stay upright and lift the top of the tracks above the water so that you can use the tracks to "paddle" back to shore.
I was thinking about a winch on the barge, but a co² safety balloon sounds a lot more fun
@@phirenz I guess that could work too. But he would have to add propulsion to the barge or inflate his kayak to retrieve it.
Was going to comment exactly that! Nice work Mr G
@@platima Thank you sir
Would a compass work okay under water? Also surrounded by those two motors? I thought he should use a gyrometer or something to keep an idea of orientation but it would eventually build up some error.
This is a great concept ! Once again your crazy contraption is amazing ! My suggestion for “version two” would be to have a larger surface barge and a small additional spring loaded cable with an electric winch to lift the underwater rover in case it gets stuck or fouled in the weeds.
I agree with you,plus it'll be nice if he added propullsion motors motor like a sub one or two just in case he got stuck underwater i think that would be a great help.
Give the barge propulsion too - it could go out and drop the cat into the right place, and bring it home
I am not an engineer, but i think, that he should cover the upper side of belts.
@@petavaverka water would still get in but then it could more efficiently generate thrust against the way you are going. Now im curious. If anybody has an answer please let me know.
The raft should have enough buoyancy to lift the rover with a winch for either a cable or directly to the communication wire. Maybe a couple of motors to raft with propellers attached to retrieve. Though this would be somewhat over engineered.
01:22, you can make PLA waterproof if you put it in aceton vapor, the walls melt down and create a glossy plastic finish which seals all the layers together like a molded plastic.
This is INSANE, daniel! Wish you and your community here a merry XMAS! 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄
I love you pcb!
no way, he is called Daniel too?😯that's why he is so amazing
So what does pcb stand for?
@@unitedunitedunited_ Printed Circuit Boards
the video is before 2 hours
So much better than my tethered submarine 🤣
absolutely LOVE underwater stuff! would love to see more things like underwater crawlers and ROV's!
sonar works better then radio waves when trying to transmit data underwater, if you ever want to be tether-less i suggest looking into it
As far as day to day environments go there really isn't a more destructive one then the marine one. its ability to silently destroy has to be admired in the endless ways it attacks systems haha.
Keep up the work man, you make me wish I never stopped building and experimenting with theses things.
Maybe add a little winch for the cable on the sub? That way it could use the top boat to pull itself up and let itself down at a suitable place?
Hey Daniel ! For the video signals you definitly should use coaxial cables. It will have a "shield" functionality and will prevent the video from being jammed by the other signals such as power or ESCs. As it's low speed signal you don't care about impedance and can use both 50 or 75ohm cable. There are some really thin ones available. All you have to do is solder the signal on the inner line and GND on the shield on both sides (rover and barge). Hope it helps !
Yes using a coaxial cable is the proper thing here, but as far as I am aware the signal from the FPV camera is composite video. Composite video was designed for use with standard FM/Broadcast TV coax which is 75 ohm. It's possible it will work fine on 50 ohm, but it's supposed to be 75 ohm. 75 ohm also happens to be the most available and in some cases cheaper than 50 ohm. My recommendation for him would be RG-59, for the 40 foot tether, the video signal and cable structure should be plenty strong. Like you said, make sure you ground the outer shield. Particularly at the camera and transmitter, not just any power ground as ground current could actually cause a similar interference problem.
Also secondarily, run the video signal as a parallel tether, not shared with the power cables (That's what's causing the interference, not the 5V PWM signal, the battery power creating a magnetic field.)
Also...batteries in the robot itself will minimize or eliminate most of the weight of the tether, while also acting as weight to keep the robot at the bottom, and will allow you to use a smaller BEC circuit to power the surface equipment, and keep the surface float smaller.
There's some stuff regarding UUVs that is significantly different from normal RC stuff, because of tether lengths. You'll have a LOT of power loss over the length of the tether. Ideally, you want to use the minimum number of wires in the tether possible. For that, I recommend just the camera+ground, and 4-wire serial connecting two controller boards (One translating the receiver's 2-3 channels to serial, the other translating back to PWM) with a power booster every 50 feet along the tether. Batteries CAN be submerged if they're in waterproof boxes. I use Otterboxes, which can double as tether floats, and run my ROVs down on 200' tethers made of Ethernet cable.
If you need to waterproof, there is a product made by Lawson called LPA III. It's basically lanolin and parafin wax in a acetone solvent. When you spray it on electrical boards it waterproofs them. I've tested this for underwater operation. It's better than potting because it allows for heat dissipation and can be removed with a solvent safe for electrical boards. You could seal 3d prints with it as well.
0:43 So it's just you sir! Any video that you made was excellent and catch the attention easily. I bet that even a video about that RC in the snow would make any person like.
Have a great day, don't overwork yourself, sir!
not only a master in making but also in creativity, filming and explanation standing ovation!!!
Awesome prototype! It would be really neat if the barge was RC as well, with a winch that could raise and lower the rover to help recover it or place it in specific areas
That idea is actually poggers but would require a pretty large and stable barge or much smaller rover
You should make the barge in RC boat so you can control it and remotely drop it down/pull it up
Should have paddels that fold in one direction on the tracks :)
Awesome build!
think about it once again
@harrie205 a pin to to raise them on the front wheel and an elastic string to fold them down on the top side, should work fine?
would make reversing and skid-steer less possible
You should have engineered an emergency inflation device for getting stuck ! A co2 canister maybe with a heavy balloon . Great video….
In the future for small amounts of moisture, you can buy silica gel cat litter for extremely cheap compared to the packets made for drying.
Drop a few granules inside the “dry zone” and you’ll be good. I keep 3D filament in a big Tupperware tub with the silica litter sprinkled on the bottom because I live in FL and it’s swampy as hell, but the filament stays crazy dry! The stuff works incredibly well for how much you use. Literally a few granules would keep a housing like your camera dry.
It’s useful stuff, you can use it for a ton of things you probably wouldn’t think about until you have it.
This is one of the most interesting projects I’ve seen recently, I’d never heard of those methods of waterproofing electronics before and I think underwater RC is just such an interesting concept! This makes me wonder how to build an underwater rock crawler and do some submerged off roading…
It's super easy, I do it...frequently...
I'm known as a submarine driver among the crawling groups I'm in, because it's not unusual for me to drive my crawlers in 2-3 feet of water. I use waterproof potted air receivers with the peripheral antenna mounted on a long-snorkel (sitting 18" from the ground) so the most it gets is 18" under, which is right about where the Spektrum DSMX frequency starts to fail. I've gotten as much as 22" of water between the antenna and the radio and been in control, but it's spotty at that depth)
@@NikkiTheOtter Wow that's really interesting. I thought my use of cheap rc motors as outboards was something ;)
@@shaft3r1 Oh it is. We have to sometimes get CREATIVE with our parts
The ducks know predators won't eff with them if they're close to people. They figure people are less likely to hurt them, being big and slow and generally preoccupied.
If you want to 3D print waterproof things you must use ABS filament, is a bit tricky to print, you need an enclosure for the printer to keep the heat from the bed under control, ABS like to cool down slowly, after your print is ready, do a bath with acetone vapors to smooth the print and is ready, there are many videos of how to do the acetone vapor bath on youtube.
Jesus
Ive been watching you for ages now but holy shit, this is it Daniel. This is what we want to see. Do more of this underwater stuffy
You are a crazy nerd! That is a genuine compliment by the way. It’s people like you who make the world go round and then explain how you do it to the rest of us. So cool in such a nerdy-geeky way. Thank you
I love this channel so much, it deserves to be bigger
I love the concept... the view driving across the bottom while exploring is for some reason more satisfying than the view from a submersible. I'm a scuba diver but the idea of "4 wheeling" on the bottom of a lake or sea, just seems cool. Well done
Imagine driving a full sized vehicle down there instead of a full sized submarine
I found the bit about using mineral oil to flood the electronics pretty interesting. For the tank, i wonder if it would be feasible to turn it into a submarine hybrid which would allow it to get out of trick situations, by filling tanks with air and becoming buoyant.
Honestly I am never tired of watching your snowcats especially with some beautiful scenery in the background.
Nice, dude! I think the aquacat v2 might want additional weight for traction or alternatively a propeller to make little hops over obstacles.
This is a project that needs a revisit. How deep could you get the tank to work? A lot of this doesn't actually need to be water proof? Just keeping the sand out? Would a big floating barge with a solar panel be able to supply power for unlimited tank range? Also a nice long range antenna? Then take it to the beach and drive out through the surf to 30ft depth? Maybe large diameter wheels instead of tracks to keep it away from the sediment?
You should totally do a screw tracks! They would work so much better than treads! This project is so cool and I would love to see it continue!
8:56 There is no way you touched that duck XD. Can't lie to us man we got you in 4k literally.
Sweet! Now make your barge RC with enough power to tow the tank and even winch it up off the bottom!
Thank you for pronouncing silicone correctly, I had never thought it might be corrosive. Very impressive re-spin of the snowcat.
What a way to show how versatile your platform is! Also wanted to say that i'm completely in love with this seabed crawler idea and very impressed with your quick adaptations to make this thing not instantly die underwater. I would greatly enjoy followups for this branch of the project.
❤
4:31 the air inside is seriously cool
When it spins
Absolutely awesome as always. I've always wanted to diy my own ROV. You should look into removing the mounted ballast weight, and look into making some sort of emergency cutaway balast. If you get stuck, or too deep you could flick a switch and float to the top, leaving the balast as a reasonable sacrifice. The hard part is making it water tight... If you use steel plates for your weight, you could use magnets mounted to actuators of some sort to engage/release. Then you can use a magnet on a rope and the blow up kayak to recover your weights. Just an idea for if you ever revisit this.
4:28 the bubbles reforming after every turn was pretty cool XD
Submarines are cool and the FiFish looks pretty neat, but the idea of an aquatic crawler is so much more interesting to me - it's almost like driving on the moon. It might also be cool to tow some kind of camera-torpedo behind one of your boats, with a lil mechanism to reel it in as needed. Great stuff as always!
That was actually really cool. Would be cool to try to revisit this concept with a longer tether and a better barge that can take a beating and is more watertight, could also have solar on it. I wonder if there is a way to send/receive signals, telemetry, and video over ethernet. Like some kind of converter that puts everything in a a single cable. Could have a battery onboard but also use POE to trickle charge it on the fly.
What if you added a solar panel on the raft so that the battery drains slower, Wouldn't need to worry about cooling since your surrounded by water.
You should add propellers so you can lift it and back propellers to go forward like a bote
This seems like a very nice platform to have underwater manipulation arms since it would be super stable!
Ok.....I gotta make one now. I love the floating barge idea. That honestly is the best part.
The mineral oil being non conductive is really cool to know! If I remember correctly from my hvac classes you REALLY can’t use that stuff cause it eats away at the metal or something.... or mineral oil was good and the other option were terrible... I’m pretty sure it was the first though cause I can’t shake the feeling that mineral oil is awful because of some esoteric reason I can’t remember.... they threw ALOT at us each week in those classes.
You just build whatever you think of without even thinking if its possible. incredible
Tremendous work guys, hats off to you! Huge value in the work you are doing, I bet it would have cost BAE big dollars to get this far. Talk about "agile engineering" - I think there's a lot the "big boys" could learn from your approach to getting things done. Keep on!
Hello rctestflight, love the video. For fixing your interference issues, I recommend using a wire with screened twisted pairs, then be sure to ground the screens. I work in the sensor industry, and we use these in all sorts of high interference environments, and they always work.
you should definitely explore this concept more! it looks really cool driving underwater!
For a first prototype,this is an outstanding success! Underwatering is hard. 🎉
part 2 please, this project is super cool
I made an underwater rover all the way back in 92, and I had the same problems with disturbing mud river bed as you, I used an RC tank for the base, and back then my camera was only 240p lol, at the start of this video I was thinking is he going to use a boat as I did for the tether. What inspired me to build it was an ROV that I controlled once on a deep sea selvedge ship I worked on, I keep thinking of building one again but with today's tech.
Really cool video.
VERY cool concept, been a dream of mine to build/own something like this since I was a child, so cool! Maybe a longer tether and a boyant safety string attached to the barge/boat for emergency recovery as an upgrade? Would love to see more and deeper exploration!
I just want you to know that when I saw you had uploaded I literally said “Oh hell yea!” Out loud.
Love the content man
I can't wait for more versions of this! Super interesting
if you ever need it to go 40ft+ down, maybe try making a rotating coiler/uncoiler that automatically ravels/unravels the line, leaving some slack
What a great project - a huge learning curve 🙂
I used to work on Submersable ROVs - Have you considered using a perspex (or similar) dome to house your electronics, camera and lights in? Also how about a couple of thrusters to help you out when you get stuck.
Well done on what you achieved - you do some amazing projects 🙂
It's a cool RC that I didn't even think of. It's just plain looking, but it works great.👍👍👍
why did you go through all the trouble to seal the motors? aren't brushless motors sumergable? was it to keep the bearings fresh?
Brushless DC motors can be used subsea no problem at all but requires regular flushing with fresh water after each dive.
Oh, this is so cool! You could add a motorized reel and make the barge basically an R/C boat. That would allow you to go deeper and hoist back up in deep water for the hills. Awesome job!
Better than oceangate
See you in hell
Whaaaayyyyyy!!!!!
No ay bro just said that lmao
💀
Yea
I took my rc boat to the beach.. most fun ive ever had with it jumping wakes and doing turn arounds on wakes!
More underwater content please :)
You should totally patent this, great Idea.
Gotta use this to find the titanic sub
Improbable explorations! This is the lunar edge of mobile experiment.
Only you could grapple this this back home.
Favourite printer? Worst print quality ive seen😂
Those brushless motors work fine in the water.. You don't need all that oil....Cool build!.
Important tip about making watertight 3D prints: use solvents. F.e. ABS washed by acetone becomes completely waterproof after drying and even can keep HP air (given the part has appropriate thickness). Super easy, doing that for years since 2015, always works.
Cool concept! Some electronics geek ideas: use differential, 2 wire signals for the video to get rid of that interference. Coax will not help much if the grounds are interconnected. Maybe a fluxgate compass module so you can know which direction it's going?
Hi there have done a lot of underwater printing. There are a few tips that can help you:
1. A little over extrusion wont hurt your prints. It will make parts more waterproof and you will also be able to use less infill.
2.Doing 100% fill is actually bad. With bad filament it can actually crack from inside and let water in.
3. Something weird i have done. I coverd most of my prints in silicon or component glues.
Anyway after building a lot of desktop fauntains and water boats this is all i have to say hope it helps!!
Please do more underwater projects 🙏🏻 it's so facinating to see things explore the depths. There's so many things you can have fun with doing around the area that you are. You never know what you're going to find. A insta360 camera could create a really cool perspective as well.
You got one of the most useful sponsors around on this video... We're all sick of the dumb mobile game sponsors, VPNs and Vention. This one is actually a usable supplier for us hobby enthusiasts...
With all my fpv power wire I now wind in a common mode filter with a single ferrite donut just large enough to fit servo size wires in with 4 windings for both pos and neg. It's very light, very cheap and very effective. Also to make waterproof prints, print in ABS and use acetone vapour to join the layers together
Awesome stuff you’ve done here. As for using 3D printing for low-pressure watertight enclosures I’ve personally had success using extremely fine layer heights with vapor smoothing. (I use ABS with acetone, but you need a pretty big skirt so it doesn’t warp). I make the walls a little thicker, but you don’t need 100% infill. Where you’d like to screw in flat surfaces like that plexiglass you have to sand the plastic as flat as you can get it (which it looks like you’ve done here). Barrel sanding techniques work quite well. In order to make that process easier though I’d reccomend using some automotive water pump gasket material with a set of cheap gasket punches for the screw holes. Works wonders. Made everything from submersible enclosures to PC water blocks with this method.
Best of luck!
Ok this is absolutely awesome, and I know it would be a lot of work but here's an idea so you can actually do some deep exploring and not have to worry so much about it getting stuck.
You should build a bigger "barge" that is powered, and also has a powered reel on it so it can lift the aquacat up and out of the water, then you can simply drive the barge back to shore. I can't imagine it would be easy to get stuck and you wouldn't have to rely on traction or flat surfaces to make it back.
This is amazing. I imagine the submarine tank using your kayak tug as it’s surface support. Perpetual daytime power source. If the tank needs recovery, the tug drags it out on its own power. Add a 3D printed winch and it can even pull it up close to the surface.
YES! that thing is cool as heck!! do a longer tether for sure!!
This might be the coolest thing I've seen on this channel
Possible improvements:
Larger more buoyant/stable raft
Heavier rover
Lightly spring loaded reel to let out more tether as rover gets deeper, on raft
Vapour smoothed ABS has a decent sealed surface, even on a solid print there is fair amount of entrapped air though=bouyant. Nice job
Awesome! Next time add a winch to the barge so it can pull the rover up! Better yet: ditch the barge, make it autonomous, and add a ballast tank so at the end of the mission (or if it gets stuck) it automatically floats itself to the surface!
I've made 3d prints watertight by coating the piece itself in epoxy. Works fine and you don't have to use much.
Not even joking, this is the type of stuff I wish Mark Rober would do too. You are absolutely killing it my man, headed to watch your newest videos next
That is awesome
Maybe you can use a winch on the barge to lift it up and a motor so you can control the barge back when you get in trouble.
Footage of it driving was better than the POV. Cool project over all.
next you should build a hydroplane big enough to deploy the ‘Tracked ROV’
totally not inspired by Avatar 2 lol
Id love to see this project revisited and improved upon. I love the idea!
Definitely revisit this project, I'd love to see this thing as a powerful plower with a looong tether
this is my first video of yours and i gotta say, you got yourself a new subscriber :) but i wanted to offer a tip: if for the mineral oil filled motors, you submerge everything and screw on the cover while submerged in a small container of mineral oil, you ill get 0 air bubbles (just a mess to clean up after when you take it back out)
Just keep in mind that the silt on the bottom of lakes is usually very loose and not compacted. It can't support any weight, it's like a liquid.
I really like this project, very cool engineering 👍
Can't wait for part 2 this is the best so far
an industrial quality version of this has so much potential... add on an arm for retrieving lost items and a system to reel in and out the cable from the "barge" for increased depth, maybe even a bouyancy tank for hi speed travel with props in gimballed direction control...
You have to make drift tracks!!!
I have FDM printed water tight parts before, even without any coatings. I used ASA printed at 270-275 C and about 2-3% overflow compared to my normal flow. Also, certain slicing settings can create gaps, so you have to inspect and adjust as needed. DM me if you want more info. I made a large container than holds 5 L of water - no leaks after several months.
Ive played with this before, so some tips for you;
- Stick the battery down in the rover to add weight; gives better traction, less noise.
- Only feed the antennas up to the top, signal wires don't carry much noise.
- Use a flipped PET soda bottle as a buoy, guaranteed 100% waterproof, can't flip over.
- Antennas don't have to be outside the buoy, just make em point up.
- Weigh the buoy down by gluing a giant ferrite ring around the neck.
- Put a lightweight flagpole on the buoy, shows if you go too deep, easy to snag with grapple. ;)
- Use a nylon rope as the tether core, puts less stress on the cables.
- Add little floats to your tether, keep it off the ground or it will snag.
- Glue a spherical compass to your rover, works better than electronic.
Should add a 3rd person view pole with camera on the back of the rover to see it drive around. Great work!