ROV Boat design

[gleason]

My Museum has just recieved a boat as a donation and we want to set it up as a search platform. This is a fully dedicated craft and will only be used for ROV and side scan sonar operations. We will use it for searches for wrecks both in the Great Lakes as well as smaller inland lakes. We want to make this boat availible to state wide police departments

My question: What would police like to see on board to help their efforts. What types of ROVs and side scan? Any and all suggestions welcomed!

[tom_glebas]

See the following threads for more suggestions:
http://www.rovinfo.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=540
http://www.rovinfo.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=516

What do you have on the dash? I presume you will want GPS. It would be nice to have one receiver and not have to have seprate ones for each system - Boat, Smart Tether, Side Scan. Does the boat have a basic depth finder? Also, depending upon budget, some daylight viewable screens with inputs would be cool.

A dedicated place for a pole mount would be nice.

Storage of all the gear is probably something you're going to have to deal with every day, so I wouldn't skimp there on making things easy to access, and not a lot of empty boxes in the way while operating.

A diver below flag.

What do you plan to use for power? I presume it has two batteries, but you might want to add a separate one with inverter for the underwater gear.

Food and water for long days.

I'm sure there are a lot more things people will come up with here to help.

And of course, yellow VideoRay T-shirts for the crew (and a seat for me)... (Actually, yellow is not a good color to wear if you are in front of the monitor, since it creates a bright reflection - darker color shirts are better for pilots or operators.)

Good luck with your project!
Tom

[Chief]

Mark,

There are quite a few choices, from the gear to the power supply including sponsorship (If Tom wants you wearing VideoRay T-shirts in pictures etc... he should be giving up a loaner system at a minimum ).

The first thing that must be decided is your budget. That'll probably eliminate a lot of items. Then define what is going to be your maximum working enviornment (depth, sea state etc...), then what your normal working enviornement will be.

Using sonar as an example, if you said you were only going to 100' depths, I wouldn't even use a side scan, I'd go with one of those nice Hummingbird systems. If you then put a sonar on your ROV, you could drop it on targets to help rule out object or find the target.

Power is always a touchy one. Personally I'd go with an inverter and a generator. Just make sure they produce True signe waves, not modified ones. Modified ones can really mess up computer gear and electronics.

Let us know what your idea's are etc... and we'll try and help you choose what works right for you.

Chief

[gleason]

All good suggestions. A couple of questions????

First, On the diver flag. Are people using divers flags for ROV workor the boat flag/day shape for limited ability to manuver. Any problems with USCG or law enforcement or are they being flexible.

Second; On the power issue, we are thinking that the small honda generator would be our choose. Any issues with them out there?

Everyone here is excited about this boat and looking forward to getting it out there. We already have a trip planned for looking at some great lakes shipwrecks. And maybe heading out to lake Champlain.

So thanks for the suggestions.

mark

[Chief]

Mark,

The "Alpha" flag is used to designate underwater operations and is generally meant to warn other vessels of what your doing. The red/white diver down flag is meant to protect the diver. So if your conducting underwater operations (including diving or ROV operations) you can fly the Alpha flag. Some state mandate that you must fly the diver down flag for diving also.

I'm a huge fan of the Honda "EU" (and no that doesn't mean European Union...) series of gensets. You can usually find them fairly cheaply on Craig's list. Though the 1000watt is more than adequate for the VideoRay, you may want to consider the EU 2000 so you can power up other items (side scans etc...).

Are you guys going to use a sonar on the ROV or just off the boat???

Chief