Build Day 4

Build day 4!


We did some waterproofing (potting) of the endcaps for the main electronics enclosure tonight with some two-ton epoxy, and we also spilled impressive amounts of acrylic cement on our fingers and my workbenches (OK mostly me that did the spilling) while setting up the servo arms and base for the webcam.  Speaking of the webcam...

Success!

We have a working webcam for our little beast!   Danny and Trey assembled the webcam components way back on day one, and we are just now assembling it to the electronics frame, so I thought it fitting to grab a few photos with it.  We now need to let our acrylic cements and epoxy fillings set for a while so we called it another successful build night on the 'bot.

Enjoy some more pics of the build:

Potting the endcaps

Gotta get in between all the wires of the main wiring harness.  No gaps!

Dat pink glue gun

Reading the instruction on the epoxy... after we had started using it already, of course. 

And Dan said let there be light

Build Day #3

Pics from yesterdays build. We got the motors mounted, the fan shrouds installed, the battery tubes mounted, as well as started on the wiring harness.

Video from build day two

Austin ROV build day two from Daniel Epperson on Vimeo.

Pictures from Day One of the Build

We also got some pretty good pictures of the build from day one. Here are a few teasers. We may release more as a gallery, or something. Check back later for that.

Video from Day One of the Build

We put a GoPro up on a tripod above the workbenches and took a nice little stop-motion vid of the build in progress last night.  Too bad the GoPro died before we finished, but the video turned out pretty cool!

Build Day One

Team Member - Richard I

Richard modifying a 30 gallon fish tank

Hi everyone! My name is Richard I. I have my Computer Information System degree from Texas State University, and am currently a Sysadmin for fortune 500 company. I got the pleasure of meeting the other team members both in college, and in my career as an IT professional.

I have experience with all types of projects, most notably what I am working on in the photo. Both James R and I were the primary members who built a custom computer submerged in Dielectric Mineral Oil. It was over a years worth of planning, and 6+ months of building before we got a working prototype.

Finished Dielectric Mineral Oil POC

This system scored better then 96% of all system who have ever ran the 3DMark graphics test. We also ran temperature readings in both air/oil and was able to prove that there was a significant drop is CPU/Motherboard temperatures during high loads.

The Dielectric Mineral Oil Proof of Concept (or PC of Justice as we like to call it) was one of the coolest projects I have had a chance to work on before! The ROV build, especially because of the knowledge we hope to gain from our experiments, looks to be working towards topping it though!

I am very excited to be a part of this project! If we can get enough data to even help save one persons life it will all be worth it!

A Box Full o' Parts

We now have ourselves a box full of ROV parts!  A whole lotta parts. It's going to be fun and challenging to not just build it,  but to make sure we do it right.   Dan S and I swung by Danny's place to help set up some work tables and couldn't help but treat ourselves to a bit of unboxing.   We'll be posting the full unboxing once we get the whole team together to start the build next week,  but for now here's a few photos!