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