SubRon6 - Fleet

The SubRon6 Fleet

The Irish ROV-er

Tim Smalley

Made from PVC pipe and six 12 V bilge pumps for thrusters. Hard wired with 60 feet of cable to shore side box with 6 momentary contact pushbutton switches to control thrust. Monitor is a $22 B&W TV from Target.

2003 T.M. Smalley

ROV-er with U/W camera - Tim Smalley (tmsmalley@yahoo.com)

This camera equipped and totally home made ROV - was a personal challenge to build for $100. I found some plans in a book called "Build your own ROV" and altered them for my purposes. There are also several good do-it-yourself sites on the web about ROVs.

The camera housing is just a piece of PVC pipe with stainless steel studs set in one end to hold the lexan port in - a piece of buna rubber is the gasket. I used a 3 wire jack and plug (the yellow item) I got from Paul Hruby to get the signal out and the battery power in. I only needed three wires because the ground is common. I got some 22 ga 8 conductor wire to use to control the 6 ballast pumps I use as thrusters (on off only no ESC.) The video signal is fed up through a 2 conductor AV coax - one side is video the other is 12V to the camera.

NEW - 3/2/03

I found a semi- reasonably priced color camera and 12V VCR/TV combo at Wal-Mart so I am now color and recording capable, but am now over my $100 limit. I will keep the B&W cam for low light explorations!

I hope to have ROV-er sea-tested for the May 17, 2003 SubRon6 fun run to shoot some u/w video of everyones' subs.

Bring a blank VHS tape along if you want me to shoot some underwater footage of your boats for you to take home with you!