A few people have expressed interest in building an OpenROV. We'll be documenting our progress here.
Next Steps
Determine what version to build.
Put together a BOM using as many local sources as possible.
Start gathering the parts.
Continue to examine the BBB software.
Initial Look
At this stage, it's been mostly research. I've been reading up on OpenROV. I've purchased a BeagleBone Black from Lee's Electronics on Main St ($55 + tax). Being lazy, I downloaded the BBB image from the Github rep, unzipped it, and used Win32 Disk Imager to write the image to a microSD card (2gb are required, but I had an 8gb card laying around). Then I purchased a micro HDMI cable from The Source (around $10 I think), and took a quick peek at the BBB which runs linux. The default username is: rov and the password is: OpenROV. From there, I could browse to Start.html and see the interface used to control the ROV.
The point of all this was basically to get familiar with the BBB, and get a bit of insight into the project. I'll likely update the image again before it's done. Some other things to note:
I have not purchased the OpenROV Cape (the BBB version of a shield for any Arduino folks out there). The current shield will work with the BBB, but it requires that you clip a couple of debugging pins. Since I'm not even sure if I will build version 2.4 (current at the moment), or wait for 2.5, I'm not really keen to mod my BBB just yet.
I've joined the OpenROV site. I sent in a request from the login screen, and within the day I was added.
I also joined the Google+ OpenROV group. Some interesting posts in there.
I've downloaded the DXF files for the plastic parts. They are broken into four files: Blue 3mm acrylic, White 3mm acrylic, Clear 3mm acrylic, and Clear 6mm acrylic. Again, not sure I'll use these, but I wanted to take a look. Some of the parts require bending. This led me to think about building a nichrome wire acrylic bender similar to
this. I'll have to see how my time plays out.
OpenROV requests that you etch a serial number in to each build. They provide them. Once I've decided what version I'll be using, I'll probably do a test cut of the components, then request a serial number for the final cut.
Total Cost to Date: $65 cdn