We had a blast at Maker Faire yesterday! It was great to see so many of you. Hope to see more of you today. If not, Eric and my talk's will be livestreamed: http://fora.tv/conference/maker_faire_bay_area_2013/livestream…

Photo Credit: TED

One of my favorite talks from this year's TED conference was Denise Herzing's…

Anthony White ran some experiments with 3D printed ABS parts. Here's what he had to say on Google+:

What happens when a printed part is exposed to 3000 meters of water pressure…

Eric just uploaded a number of high-res photos of the layout of the electronics inside the acrylic tube. We'll have more extensive diagrams and steps up on the wiki soon, but in the mean time these…

We are preparing to build our OpenRov kit, serial number 307 and have unfortunately run into our first issue before even getting started...

When ordering the additional materials needed for the build from the Bill list, we got this message from McMaster-Carr

Hi Jason,

Due to the complexity of U.S. export regulations, McMaster-Carr only accepts international orders from our established customers.  This decision also applies to orders…

As many of you have noticed, the wiki and documentation has been going through a bit of a makeover. Colin has been doing an awesome job updating all the content and assembly information to account for all the upgrades and changes that have happened over the past few months. 

There are still a few sections that need updating, so stay tuned for more. Check out the new videos and write-ups…

In case you missed it on the forums, Chris has pointed out a new way to protect the solder joints using hot glue (and even…

We'll be hosting another build day at the Berkeley HQ the week after Maker Faire - Saturday, May 25th. Details here. 

We're also going to have meetup in Boston on June 15th. If we can find a body of water or pool to use, we'll be doing OpenROV demos there,…

OpenROV will be at Maker Faire next week! If you're in the area, we'd love to see you. Please make a point to stop by and say hi. 

Eric and I will each be giving presentations on Sunday morning, too. …

Evan Clark and the Stanford@SEA program just sent us this video from their first test dive with their OpenROV. They plan to make dives at some pretty incredible locations over the next few months. We'll make sure they post some of those dive videos here!

Reading this article about Lockheed Martin's new "Marlin" AUV, it was interesting to see why this AUV was so effective. …

Frank pointed out on the forums that the Dutch Ministry of Defense is spearheading an international effort to develop wireless underwater communication - underwater internet. The stories I could find were sporadic. (For example, this one.)

Let us know if you find anything else about this!

We continue to be really excited about the BeagleBone Black! It's going to be a great upgrade for OpenROV to grow into. 



We originally reported that the OpenROV cape was going to be compatible with the new Black, but now that we've had our hands on it, we've discovered an…

Dive! Dive! Dive! OpenROV for Ocean Exploration with Off-the-Shelf Hardware and Open Designs

"The ocean is one of the most unexplored reaches of our planet, yet much of it can be explored if you have your own ROV. The aim of the this class and the OpenROV project is to put ROVs in the hands of hobbyists and…

I (Philip Mathieu) have been working with my brother (Nathanael) to adapt OpenROV for the Raspberry Pi.  We've had a lot of technical difficulties, gone through three different Linux distributions, and learned a lot along the way, but haven't quite managed to get everything running.  That being said, the most important components (working out the power…

What will Ocean exploration consist of in 2020?

NOAA and the Aquarium of the Pacific are hosting a National Forum in July to discuss just that. They've invited Eric and I to present on the maker and…

Like always, Matt Richardson is all over it! 



Check out his full post on Makezine. Here are some specifics:

• The processor gets a bump up to 1GHz, compared to the original’s 720MHz.

• RAM is doubled to 512MB.

• The BeagleBone Black can be connected directly…

First things first: We won! Well, everyone won, really. It was a great weekend of hacking and it was  great to see so many teams working on OpenROV related stuff around the world. (Here is the full list of OpenROV projects.)



Here are…

The NASA Space Apps Challenge is wrapping up all over the world. It's been a fun weekend of collaboration across continents, and certainly some fun new features for the ROV.



Above; The Reno team demos their virtual OpenROV being flown by hand gestures using…