GAVIN'S
UNDERWATER DRONE

So after the initial test in my backyard’s jacuzzi, I learned that the balance of the drone was totally off, making the drone’s front float. Strapping some weights I found around my house to the drone actually seemed like a decent solution, so I decided to stick with the practical route; and I bought a container of small stainless steel beads that were both dense and easy to work with. I started by pouring exactly 1 pound into two plastic ziplock bags, which I then insert in

Today, I finally had a chance to actually test the drone underwater. Because I was still unsure and concerned about a couple factors regarding the drone—including the buoyancy, strength of the electronics tubes, and true driving ability of the drone—I wanted to do the first test in a more controlled environment first. Luckily, in my backyard sits a small lifted up jacuzzi-pool type of thing—shallow enough that the drone wouldn’t sink too deep to implode, deep enough to let i

After letting all the epoxied endcaps cure, I was finally ready to put the whole drone together. Starting with the big electronics tube, I connected each ESC with the corresponding wires jutting out of the endcap and also connected the camera USB to the Raspberry Pi. With that, all I had to do was clip the batteries in on the opposite side of the tube and fit the endcaps on. Although it ended up being a very close fit, with the endcaps just barely being able to fit fully on a

Unfortunately, school has started and therefore progress has slowed a bit, however we’re in the home stretch. This week, I finally did the epoxy waterproofing for all the endcaps. Although straightforward, waterproofing did take a decent amount of time. I had to first plan out the placement of all the wires connecting the ESCs and motors, as well as camera and ethernet cables. Because the wires start at the front of the tube, I started by cutting 6 short wires for the 2 front

Alright, rewinding back to after I tested the motors to make sure they all spun in the correct direction, what I actually did was go straight to Cockpit and attempt to drive the drone. Considering I hadn’t changed any of the settings limiting the power of the motors, you can imagine that the first time I moved the joysticks, I got a little jumpscared. The motors ramped up from 0 to a screeching sound that I at first thought was due to some kind of motor malfunction, when in r