Bubbles Under The Sea

Group 19

A remotely controlled submarine with a livestream video feed for active exploration by people who normally couldn't swim as well as for general fun.

For our project we designed and created a submarine with the capability of sending an active feed of the submarine's view to a game controller. The hull is built out of three primary portions: the ogive which houses the dome and camera, the PVC body that protects the ballast, and the tail section which holds the engine nacelles. Inside of the dome we use a Raspberry Pi camera that is mounted on a pan and tilt mechanism that can move the camera in accordance to the user changing the right-hand joystick. Inside the body we store the on-board Raspberry Pi, the pumps and bladder for the ballast system, the internal batteries, and the static ballast. Embedded in the tail are inlet and outlet pipes for the ballast pumps so the the submarine can take in water and release it to change its current depth.

The device to control the submarine is an Xbox controller with another Raspberry Pi mounted onto it and is powered via a battery that is connected to a PCB Board that connects to the Pi via Ethernet. The Pi boots into a listening mode for the sub's information imagery and telemetry, along with booting into an active writing mode that sends UDP packets to the submarine along the cable providing Power over Ethernet.

Power over Ethernet allows us to power the submarine from an external land battery and also transfer data to the submarine using only one cable. With the involvment of possible wild life the best option is to limit the amount of wiring that runs between the user and the submarine. Among the features are the low delay between image reception (< 100 ms) and user action (< 150 ms), variable lights, along with the ability to pan and tilt the camera whenever they want. This allows users to pilot this stylish submarine and see all that's under the water's surface!