Troubled so hard

We enthusiastically went for our third test dive, after having put away the ROV in 100% working order. Or so we thought. Our expedition was fraught with troubles.

outside underwater ROV view

One of our issues was the vertical propeller, which came unstuck from the motor bell and tried to escape out the finger guard.

vertical propeller escape attempt

Lag was also a huge issue. The ping times and responsiveness of the ROV vary wildly while in use, making it hard to predict and control. Speaking of control, I brought along a joystick which I think added much more confusion than it was worth. I do hope to set up a custom mapping for my many button joystick but that is going to be sidelined in favor of getting a reliable experience.

http://openrov.com/forum/topics/upgrading-unix-kernel-to-eliminate-camera-lag-issues

The ROV died at the bottom of the pool, ending the day.

dead, but with full batteries

This day ending loss of contact has happened to us once before, so we were already looking at the tether on the topside for failure points. The last time that this happened, it was the cat5 cable going into the beaglebone that shook loose. We fixed that with a piece of tape but wondered if maybe it came loose again. This time it was something on the tenda homeplug adapter, sandwiched between the beaglebone and the cape. A simple re-seat fixed the issue, but for how long?

Richard (and team) perplexed by the many issues

I'm thinking about hot-gluing the tenda homeplug adapter and cat5 connectors (at least) to keep them from bumping loose and killing the ROV.