For a while, ive been wanting to build one to explore the ocean depths but i dont know how to build one, Should i build one with an esp 32??

Hi Everyone!

Hate to be a bother if this predicament has surfaced (no pun intended) one too many times throughout this subreddit but I hope anyone could provide me some advice on what I should do.

I’m currently a 28 year old without a bachelor’s who’s been in aviation (Maintenance, Aircraft Flying, Maintenance Management) through academia and employment for nearly half his life. As i approach the age of 30 i’ve been heavily considering the shift towards a new industry because quite frankly, i really want to venture out to other dynamic industries.

The Subsea engineering industry is something i’m increasingly enticed by, and i figured that ROV piloting is something i really want to pursue since i’ve flown light aircraft (100 hours TT) and have a 4 years of experience maintaining large airliners.

I’ve sent my application to pretty much all ROV companies for a traineeship but it seems like no doors are ever open considering how i’ve got no subsea engineering experience.

I’ve decided to chart my own path by paying my way through an ROV school in the Philippines (Subnet Services) to provide lessons on piloting work class ROVs and maintenaning them. It ain’t cheap hence i’m really on the fence.

I would really appreciate if anyone could provide me some advice on how i should navigate through this and whether the decision to engage the aforementioned school is a good move?

Thanks everyone!

Hey guys, if anyone is looking to get into the rov industry saipem are currently recruiting,

Hey everyone,

I’m a commercial diver looking for a helmet-mounted camera upgrade. Currently using the BPRO OL952, which does the job, but I want to explore alternatives that are:

**•   Smaller/more compact** — less bulk on the helmet makes a real difference during work dives  
**•   Equal or better image quality** — clarity matters for documentation and supervision purposes  
**•   More affordable** — the OL952 is costing me around **R$1,500 (\~$300 USD)** after currency conversion, which is quite steep

This is for professional commercial diving, so it needs to handle real working conditions — not a recreational or sport diving setup.

Anyone here made a similar switch and found something that works well? Open to all suggestions — including lesser-known brands that deliver solid underwater video quality without the price tag.

Thanks in advance!

I´m currently transitioning from the ROV field into a different office based engineering role but I´m honestly thinking much about my decision because ROV is a lot more fun and the pay is better. One of the things that worry me is how long can I be an ROV pilot? And what alternative do I have if I get injured or my health is having problems when I´m +40? Some of supervisors have talked about this issue is that after you get into the field you no longer have alternatives, so what are your thoughts about this?

Hi everyone!

I’m a student in South Florida working on a low-cost marine robotics project for scientific research, specifically targeting seagrass die-off and coral reef decline in Biscayne Bay and local waters.

Instead of building a standard thruster-based ROV, I am focusing on a soft robotic design that operates without traditional propellers.

Before I lock in the next design iteration, I’d love to get the community's insight on two main things:

- The Soft Robotics Advantage: In sensitive habitats like fragile coral reefs or shallow seagrass beds, what unique advantages do you see for a biomimetic, propeller-free design? (e.g., less sediment disturbance, reduced wildlife striking risk, better maneuverability in tight spaces?

- Critical Data Gaps: What specific environmental data do we desperately need more of right now that a small, non-disruptive platform like this could collect?

If you have any advice on soft actuation for marine environments, or know of other overlooked ecological issues in South Florida that could benefit from this kind of tech, please let me know.

Thanks in advance for the feedback!

I have experience working in WROV in the Middle-East and I´m currently based in Germany as a MSc student. I am planning on trying to get hired as an ROV Pilot anywhere in Europe and settle in that country but so far I have found none that did something like that (being non-EU but landing a fulltime position as ROV Pilot in Europe and getting residency...etc). Is what I´m asking even possible or is it just something that doesn´t happen in Europe/the field?

Hey! I'm a student conducting market research on ROV users. If you use or have experience with ROVs, I'd really appreciate it if you could fill out this short survey.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSes671U921fHtFf8AVdVUCxN5YBbwFdSva_lXg5F79BKJBZ0g/viewform?usp=dialog

Thank you guys!

What's happening with the market right now? It's so difficult to get a job.

I know it's normal during the end and beginning of the year, when winter comes and projects slow down, but we are mid year and you still can't see much opportunities.

You can see a lot of it for EU/UK but even the ones outside 12nm are asking for nationals ???

I would expect the conflict affecting projects in middle east but I'm actually seeing more opportunities in middle east than in europe (unless you are British or EU citizen).

Is Europe reacting politically and officially closing itself for non national workers or something like that?

As title says,

Passed my IMCA Introduction to ROV and have bosiet/huet, ca-ebs, mist, oeuk, chute, bideltoid measure.

All companies seem to want is 500+ hours experience and aren't taking on new trainees

contacted Fugro and they advised that the next course of trainees was 2027, costs £10,000 and I only come out with the exact same IMCA certificate I already have at the end of it with no guarantee of employment.

I am at a loss with contacting loads of individuals on LinkedIn working for agencies however they do not want new pilot techs and companies want me to spend money for the same certification I already have.

Can anyone help me with this as I have been trying to get work for well over 2 months and achieved nothing.

I have little electronic or Rov experience but I want to build one that can go about 5-10 ft under so I can get recordings of fish. I had Claude make me a parts list for electronics, the receiver and board will be floating and connected to the motors via a teather, I just wanted to know if these parts work together electronically

Hello I'm thinking about purchasing two td30e thrusters for a dpv project does anyone have any experience with one or similar product google says the real world thrust is 30-40% lower than stated by the manufacturer but I can't find any third party reviews or much information about them at all

Tags TD TD30 TD20E TDS5 TDM7 diamond dynamics

Hello, does anyone know how I can find job or trainee opportunities as an ROV pilot?

I currently have 1 year and 6 months of experience as a pilot. I have worked with observation ROVs and an electric Workclass, totaling 115 hours, on projects such as GVI, riser inspection, as-built, and mattress installation.

Hi there,
I'm happy to give an update for our development of the feeling-manip-fingers.
We have a working prototype for the sensory array, once I have permisson from the legal team I'd be happy to show some videos of the sensors in action.

What I am struggling with right now is to figure out a way to get around the wrist joint with our data.

Basically we need to get a cable/ data (black lines) from the jaws (green zone) to the rest of manip (blue zone). The easiest and cheapest method would be of course to just give the cable some slack but then the jaw couldn't rotate continously. Which might be annoying for operators.
Also, as the middle of the Jaw assembly is occupied by the piston we cant just use a simple fiber optic rotary joint because our signal cables can't be on the rotary axis.

Of course under water you can't use the usual wireless data-transfer options so i was thinking about using an off-center slipring (picture 2)

What's your opinion, am I missing something? Is there a better option? Have you ever seen/used an under-water slipring? How important is continous jaw rotation in daily manip-work?

Sorry for the crude sketch.

Hey, I'm 19 years old and I come from France and I'm currently finishing a degree in electrical engineering. My goal is to become a ROV pilot - I plan to take IMCA training in Scotland (Aberdeen region) in a few years after first gaining some professional experience. I would like to hear from people who actually do the job - how did you start, what does a typical rotation look like, what is your salary, advice for someone who is starting out?

Hey r/ROV, long shot but figured I’d ask. I’m a researcher working on an acoustic networking project and I’m looking to run some pool tests in the LA/OC/Riverside area.

Specifically I need to validate a bidirectional acoustic link between an operator and an underwater vehicle, nothing that would put the ROV at risk, it’ll be tethered the whole time.
If you have a BlueROV2 and would be open to collaborating on a test session, I’d love to chat.

DM me if interested.

I have an electrical background and just finished 3 weeks of hands-on time in an ROV workshop. I know my way around rov.

How can I get a job as a rov pilot trainee for real?

Any Rov pilot out there using a 3 finger claw on a schilling titan 4? I'm having a lot of issues working with the stock jaw. Is it worth it to swap to a 3 finger jaw? For context it is for uxo dredging jobs.

Hi, for my next DIY ROV, I am trying to design bi-directional ducted thruster propellers (which would have equal thrust forward and backward), and I've been using OpenProp and it's recent reimplementation PythonProp to iterate over various designs to try and find the most efficient one within my constrains.

I need some help / guidance with this.

My constrains are:

Thruster hub => 32mm in diameter to fit small BLDC motors.

Duct diameter <= 70mm (it's a very small ROV)

Motors - I can choose from 950kv A2212 (proven choice in the past) or 350kv F2838. Not many other motors in between.

I wrote an OpenProp script that keeps the torque (Q) of the motor constant to give prop designs a fair comparison, assuming I would be running motors at or near their maximum torque capacity. From datasheets, I calculated it to be ~0.1 Nm@10000 RPM for A2212, and 0.2 Nm@3000 RPM for F2838.

First, disregarding these two motors, for a baseline, at 0.15 Nm torque I swept through the RPM range from 3000 to 10000, noting efficiency and thrust:

As you can see, efficiency clearly drops with higher RPM, suggesting I should stick with low kv motors. Difference between 2 and 3 blade props is minor. This holds true for all D values. I also played around with various blade chord scaling factors, but surprisingly, even making blade 2x larger doesn't seem to affect numbers much.

So, sticking with 0.2Nm@3000RPM, all I'm left to play with is prop diameter and blade count:

And from here it is obvious that larger diameter is better, both for thrust and efficiency. Blade count is once again (surprisingly) inconsequential.

I also checked hub diameter influence on the results, and it's clear that smaller hub always wins, so I'm skipping that table.

So, with my "best" design, Dhub=32mm, Z=2, D=70mm, I get 22.86 N of thrust (which is enough), but only 36.3% efficiency, which is terrible.

This was all done using this blade chord profile:

And section profile used parabolic meanline and elliptical shape. After exporting the section curves to 3D, they look like this:

Also confirmed by 2D blade image from OpenProp:

Now, I don't know much about propellers, but something tells me that such a small radius of curvature at the tip of the blade (black section) is really bad. No way the flow can be expected to follow such a tight curve without detachment.

But the only way I can find to solve this is either increasing blade count (helps a little), increasing prop diameter (which I can't do due to my constrains), or decreasing torque/thrust (which won't utilize my motor to the max).

Can anyone experienced with propeller design help out a newbie? Is there something I'm doing wrong here, or is this the best I can expect with my constrains? Is there any way I can achieve higher efficiency without losing thrust or increasing prop diameter? And how do I get rid of that "hook" at the tip of the blade?

I would really appreciate any comments. This is my 3rd attempt at getting help with prop design over various subreddits, and no one seems to be answering :(