New Products: Ping + Other Components

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Hi friends, happy Tuesday! We are (finally) ready to release a product that many of you have been patiently awaiting… introducing the Ping Sonar Altimeter and Echosounder (plus other fun things)!

Check out the new product video below!

Ping Sonar Altimeter and Echosounder

The Ping sonar is a multipurpose single-beam echosounder. It can be used as an altimeter for ROVs and AUVs, for bathymetry work aboard a USV, as an obstacle avoidance sonar, and more. The Ping combines a compact form factor and 300 meter depth rating with an open source user interface and development libraries to create a powerful new tool for marine robotics!

The Ping has anodized aluminum case with the sonar transducer on one side. The other side has tapped mounting holes and the Ping comes with a mounting bracket that makes it easy to install on the BlueROV2 and in other applications. It comes with a one meter cable with a pre-installed cable penetrator and is rated to an operating depth of 300m.

The Ping has a bottom-finding algorithm that locks onto the strongest response and returns the distance and measurement confidence. The Ping works great as an altimeter on the BlueROV2 but can be used in all sorts of applications from tidal monitoring to obstacle avoidance to autonomous terrain following.

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Updated Products: Ballast Weight and Desiccant

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Happy 2019, everyone! New year, lotssss of new products – we can’t weight to share what’s in store 😉 We’re starting off the year with a couple of updated ROV components: Stainless Steel Ballast Weight and Moisture Indicating Silica Gel Desiccant Bags.

Stainless Steel Ballast Weight

The new Stainless Steel Ballast Weight is a drop in replacement for original lead weight. Stainless steel is less toxic to the environment and to humans!

Moisture Indicating Silica Gel Desiccant Bags

We’ve repackaged the silica gel so they come in prepackaged in 6 individual bags. Any humidity inside your Watertight Enclosure will cause condensation to collect when placed in the water, and this desiccant will eliminate humidity inside the enclosure so that you can clearly see out of it.

All new ROV orders will come with both of these upgrades.

That’s all for today!

New Products: 18-hole 4″ Series End Cap and BlueROV2 Machined Buoyancy Foam

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Hello friends! Today we’ve got some new products to release – an 18-hole 4″ Series End Cap and BlueROV2 Machined Buoyancy Foam!

18-hole 4″ Series End Cap

Unlike most of our other end caps, which have 10 mm through-holes for each penetrator, this one has a mixture of threaded and through-holes to allow more penetrations to be packed in. The outer eleven holes are threaded with standard M10 threads. The inner seven holes are through-holes just like our other end caps. All of the holes are compatible with all of our M10 penetrators.

This end cap is compatible with the 4″ Series Watertight Enclosure and can be used on the BlueROV2 for more expandability!

BlueROV2 Machined Buoyancy Foam

Because more end cap holes means more room for all the things, and thus more weight, we have the new BlueROV2 Machined Buoyancy Foam today as well! This foam is machined specifically to add an additional 500 grams of total buoyancy on the BlueROV2. The shape fits perfectly into the BlueROV2 fairing and adds more stability and payload capacity! This is an add-on only and the BlueROV2 still comes with the standard rectangular blocks of foam.

That’s all for today!

Updated Product: Lumen Subsea Light

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Hi friends! Today we are dazzled to announce an update of the Lumen Subsea Light. The improvements are pretty lit if we say so ourselves! Read more below!

Side note: If you’re interested in having some input on our future products and developments, please make sure to take our 3rd Annual Product Interest Survey.

Check out the new Lumen!

Body and Lens

The most obvious update to the Lumen is the body and lens. The new design features aluminum screws to prevent galvanic corrosion, a thicker cable jacket less susceptible to nicks or holes, and a built in mount for convenient and secure attachment. The body is a little bit larger in diameter as well.

Wider Brightness Range and Better Low-Light Output

The first revision of the Lumen was configured to emit light ranging from about half brightness to full brightness. We’ve learned a lot since the release of the original Lumen, especially the fact that more light does not necessarily imply better lighting. The new lights have an exponential brightness curve and are capable of reaching a much lower brightness level to provide a wider dynamic range.

The image below shows a comparison between the old and new brightness ranges in illuminating a mooring at 60m water depth on a cloudy day.

More Robust Sealing and 950m Depth Rating

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BlueROV2 Named #1 Educational ROV!

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Marine robotics is truly an interdisciplinary subject – it lies at the intersection of biology, physics, engineering, and chemistry. Educators are always looking for innovative ways to illustrate concepts to their students, and for the topic of marine robotics, a remotely operated vehicle is the perfect tool for the job. We are honored to share that the BlueROV2 was named the best educational ROV by International Ocean Systems!


Captain Marc Deglinnocenti ranked the top ROVs based on five factors: ease of use, cost, ease of maintenance, expandability, and depth rating. The BlueROV2 rated high across the board. Read the full article here!

New Product! Subsea LED Indicator

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Good day, friends! We have some new products to light up your day including the new Subsea LED Indicator and a few new Water Linked Underwater GPS products! If you’re in Florida, we’re at the Diving Equipment & Marketing Association (DEMA) show in Orlando this week and excited to meet a lot of a new people! Come visit us at Stand #2184!

Subsea LED Indicator

These small LED lights fit into a cable penetrator form factor for easy installation on our watertight enclosures and they come in white, red, green, and, of course, blue! A built-in resistor makes them ready to connect to any 3-20v power supply to act as an indicator light, status light, or on/off light.

We’ve used Indicator10 on our ROVs that use aluminum enclosures to provide a power on/off indicator as well as on cameras that we provided to the MATE ROV competition earlier this summer. The lights have an anodized aluminum body and fit into a 10mm hole. An injection molded diffuser lens provides a gentle glow and a wide viewing angle that is easily viewed in full sunshine.

The blue version of the Subsea LED Indicator.

We’ve had a lot of fun with this light already, including this underwater light display built into one of our 8″ Series enclosures with a 25-hole end-cap!

Water Linked Underwater GPS Products

We have some exciting news from our friends at Water Linked – a new locator for the Underwater GPS that is battery operated and works wirelessly! Announced in coordination with the DEMA show this week, this new locator module is perfect for scuba divers, untethered vehicles, and vehicles that don’t have spare wires for the original Analog Locator.

The new locator has a clock that stays synchronized with the surface unit for up to 6 hours at a time. It’s announced today, but won’t be shipping until March of next year.

Also new today from Water Linked is an Underwater GPS Developer Bundle, which includes all of the receivers, locator, and electronics included in the Underwater GPS system, but without a case or any wiring. This configuration is intended to be integrated directly into the topside electronics system of an ROV or other vehicle. Since this kit doesn’t include any new components, it’s available starting today.

That’s all for today! Thanks for reading!

New Product! Hand Operated Vacuum Pump

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Hi everyone! Today we are pumped to add a handy tool to our product line: a Hand Operated Vacuum Pump!

This hand-operated vacuum pump allows you to test the seals on a watertight enclosure without getting it wet. The pump comes with everything you need to use it, including the Vacuum Plug. The vacuum plug inserts into the vent on the enclosure and the pump allows you to pump air out of the enclosure, creating a vacuum and simulating external pressure. If there’s a leak in the enclosure seals, air will leak back into the enclosure and the vacuum pressure on the gauge will be reduced. If it’s properly sealed, the vacuum pressure will remain the same. We also do this test after changing anything on the enclosure and at the beginning of the day before any dives.

Please see the product page for complete usage instructions.

The pump is available in a kit with the Vacuum Plug and hose and it will also be included with all new BlueROV2 orders!

That’s all for today! Stay tuned for more updates before the end of the year!

New Products! Water Linked Integration Kit and Random Fathom Tether Lengths

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Hey friends! Today we are excited to announce an Integration Kit for the Water Linked Underwater GPS System. We’ve also added a fun item to our Dings and Dents selection.

Water Linked Underwater GPS / BlueROV2 Integration Kit

The Water Linked Underwater GPS / BlueROV2 Integration Kit provides the components needed to seamlessly integrate Water Linked Underwater GPS system with the BlueROV2.

The integration kit basically adds a Fathom-X module inside the Water Linked system box so that only a single cable is needed to connect the Water Linked system to the rest of the ROV system. An 8 meter long cable is provided so that the box can be located away from the laptop and in an area with a good view of the sky for GPS signal. There are a few small cables included to wire up the Fathom-X inside the box and replace one of the external connectors.

The diagram below shows the connections that are made in the Water Linked box with the integration kit. All included cables are ready to use and installation is simple. There is no soldering or crimping required.

Miscellaneous Tether Lengths – Discounted

Over the past year, we’ve built lots of BlueROV2s and sent out lots of tether. As a result, we’ve got a bunch of random lengths of tether too short to sell on their own, and we are making them available to you at a super low cost! The fun part is each length will be a surprise – you won’t know how much you’re getting until you receive your order, but you’ll definitely get the minimum length of whichever option you choose. These are perfect for MATE teams, prototyping purposes, or for any reason you aren’t in need of more than 25m!

That’s all for today! Stay tuned for upcoming updates!

Customer Spotlight: Catalina Sea Ranch

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Many of us can relate to losing something meaningful to the forces of the ocean. I still remember the seafoam green Nike shorts I lost on a kayaking adventure back in 2013. RIP. Sometimes the losses are purely sentimental, but many times, especially in a commercial setting, the losses can be extremely costly. Regardless of whether objects are lost, or placed at the bottom of the ocean intentionally, retrieval is no simple task.

Recovering such objects has long been a job left to divers, whose services carry a hefty price tag. Not only are divers expensive, but there are undeniable safety concerns with sending humans down to depths of the ocean. Divers are also considerably limited in the amount of time they can perform tasks at depth. Many of these issues are solved with the use of an ROV, and our friends at Catalina Sea Ranch (CSR) have been successfully using their BlueROV2 (equipped with custom tools) for a number of recovery missions.

Custom recovery tool.

The first and obvious challenge of retrieving an object is finding it. Without an ROV, it could take hours, days, even months to find what’s under the surface in an area. I recently had the chance to join CSR’s crew on a rescue mission and observe first-hand how the BlueROV2 can be used as a strategic asset for object recovery. The task of the day was the retrieval of a lead weight used in the company’s anchor installation system. Capitalizing on the prior week’s success with the BlueROV2 capturing three separate pieces of scientific monitoring technologies installed on the seafloor, a second revision of the custom capture device would ferry a lifting line to the lost weight on the bottom. At 1 ton and with no convenient attachment point for the retrieval mechanism, this mission was exactly the kind of challenge the Sea Ranch crew was familiar with.

Successful retrievals.

Check out the sensor retrieval footage below!


A BlueROV2 with the new Low-Light USB Camera was fitted with a PVC tube that served as a receiver for a holder for the spring-loaded carabiner, which would attach to the target.

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New Products! Low-Light HD USB Camera and Bar100 Depth/Pressure Sensor

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Hello, friends! It’s a lovely day to #godeep, and today we’re stoked to bring a couple of capable products into the picture.

Check out the New Product Video on Youtube:

Let’s bring our focus to the new Low-Light HD USB Camera. This camera is ideally suited to use underwater with excellent low-light performance, good color handling, and onboard video compression. A specially-chosen wide-angle, low distortion lens provides excellent picture quality on the ROV. With a 3D printed camera mount, it is a drop in replacement for the Raspberry Pi Camera on the BlueROV2.

Next up we have the Bar100 Depth/Pressure Sensor. It’s built around the Keller LD Series pressure/temperature sensor, which communicates via I2C communication, just like the Bar30 Pressure/Depth Sensor. It can measure up to 100 bar – that’s over 1000 meters water depth! It has a pressure resolution of 3 mbar, providing a depth measurement resolution of 3 cm in the water column.

The Bar100 is compatible with our Watertight Enclosure Series and we have new Arduino and Python libraries to interface with it. The sensor is already supported in ArduSub for use on the BlueROV2 and other ArduSub vehicles!

That’s it for today!