500 to a thou, you'd have to focus on rich clubs. Not saying that a decent ROV could be done cheaper and still recover boats intact. But most clubs will balk at that kind of money for a non-organic retrieval system.
An ROV for recovery? Not really. One for actually finding lost ships? That would be interesting. 70% of the problem with ship recovery is finding them when the float won't surface, the rest is easy. I was messing around with the idea of a camera on a stick, but nothing came of it.
Ha! So true. I recover boats, too. The price? Pizza, or photos. If you don't want your defeat posted all over the internet, you'd better bring food for me. Darren's got a point. We don't need ROV's for ship recovery. That's the easy part. If you build an ROV, all it needs to do is locate the wreck and mark it. If you're really advanced, give it a manipulator so it can dislodge a stuck float, flip the gas safety switch, or pin the barrels. There is no need to build a robot that can lift a Yamato from the deep. In 2006, I participated in a college-level underwater ROV competition. A number of teams, including ours, found it simpler to build two smaller, specialized ROVs than to build one larger, general-purpose one. The smaller, specialized ROVs were faster, cheaper, had lower power requirements, and often could use onboard batteries instead of a bulky, heavy power cable. Simply going from a heavy power cable down to a data cable for control and video feedback reduced our power requirements and increased mobility significantly. The MIT team even reduced their connection to a tiny fiber-optic cable. I learned a lot about ROV design from that competition, even though my team didn't do very well. If you want advice or help designing your ROV, feel free to ask.
The Florida guys in MWC bought an underwater camera on a cable with the TV for like $125-$150 from Harbor Freight (I think). The idea being it's more fun to row around dragging a video camera than to hold your breath and swim a lot. Given that most ROVs are tethered, that might make a good starting point.
ya, well a ship finding rov i think i could take the price down to about 200 dollars, maybe cheaper if i can find some cheap bilge pumps (for thrusters)
A few things to consider: 1) how are you going to see what the ROV sees? The camera Tugboat mentioned seems like a good solution, but there may be others as well. 2) what will you use for thrusters? Bilge pumps aren't the only solution, nor are they always the best. Consider whether you want maneuvering jets plus main propulsion (for long, sweeping search patterns), multiple powerful thrusters arranged in an X pattern (for powerful, efficient thrust in any direction), or the classic point-one-thruster-in-each-direction trick. Also, what about up/down motion, do you simply want vertical motion, or angular control as well? Will you use rudders? diving planes? vectored thrust? 3) how are you going to control said thrusters? Each motor requires some sort of control. Whether it be simple on/off/reverse switches on a controller on shore (with tethered power), a collection of ESCs, or a custom made controller, it's gonna cost. 4) what other sensors will you install? Will you install a directional microphone, so you can home in on motor noises? lights, for dark conditions? bottom-scan or side-scan sonar? I think your original price estimate of $500-$1000 is more likely than your newer one. Besides, better to estimate high and end up with surplus than to run out halfway through the build.
