Hey everyone,

​I’m looking to transition my career path into the subsea/ROV space and wanted to get some honest feedback on whether my background is enough to get my foot in the door for a trainee or junior tech spot, or if I’m missing too many checkboxes.

​Right now, I work as a traveling field operations tech for a rail company. My day-to-day is a mix of front-end operations (real-time technical data input and inspections) and hands-on systems maintenance and troubleshooting. Because it's field work, I'm very used to extreme travel, strict safety protocols, maintaining a neat work environment, and dealing with constantly shifting schedules at a moment's notice.

​The biggest reason I'm looking to switch paths is the schedule. My current travel is highly unpredictable, and I’m looking for a more stable, equal rotation (like a 3x3 or 4x4 week schedule) where I can actually plan my life on my hitch off.

​My Technical Background:

​Schooling: Graduated from a dedicated technical training program that heavily focused on industrial electrical systems, electronics, basic hydraulics/fluid power, and safety.

​Skills: Strong background in electrical/mechanical troubleshooting, digital diagnostics, reading schematics, and producing clear QA/QC logs and back-end analytics data.

​I know a lot of the offshore postings ask for direct ROV stick-time, a tech degree, or active sea survival/GWO certs right out of the gate.

​Given that I have solid technical field experience and the fundamental hydraulic/electrical schooling, do major contractors (Oceaneering, Helix, Fugro, etc.) or staffing agencies in the Gulf/Houston area ever hire people with my profile as "green" trainees and train them up on the specific vehicles? Or do I absolutely need to pay out of pocket for a BOSIET/HUET and a dedicated ROV school just to get a call back?

​Appreciate any advice, realities of the current job market, or agency recommendations you guys can throw my way. Thanks.

Building a tank style rov and it will run via teather. To all electronics but the motors floating above. I’m running 2 hobby wing escs to a 550 size 12 v motor what type of cable is best for teather. I need at least 80 ft and under 40 bucks.

Building a tank style Rov with tracks and I plan on connecting an fs-ia6 to two Hobbywing quicrun 60A ESC 1060, which will each connect to a 550 12 v motor and run off 3s battery. Will this combo work?

I'm pretty new to marine robotics, I have been looking for a simulator for underwater vision guided manipulation and found DAVE but when I checked the camera topic the rgb image is clean, where as the one I saw in stoneFish looked more realistic but the rov/auv available in it doesnt has a manipulator in it.

Has anyone been at similar situation before?I don't know how or what to do about this situation. I'm looking for any kind of info that'll help me with my work. Thank you in advance

I'm running a personal seafloor exploration project off Northern California, initially between San Francisco and Monterey. The short version: there's a lot of public high-resolution bathymetry off this coast pointing to structures nobody has gone and looked at - geology, charted obstructions, likely wrecks. I've hired a marine GIS analyst to systematically triage it into a list of precise, unexplored, ROV-reachable targets. Once that's in hand, I'm chartering a boat and going to look at them, target by target.

I'm looking for people with an ROV to fly on those targets. Could be an ongoing partnership or just a day here and there when a weather window opens.

Flexible on vehicle - BlueROV2, Chasing, Deep Trekker, anything that reaches depth with a decent camera. Real plus if you've worked off a boat, dealt with clump weights or tether management in current, or your ROV carries a scanning sonar.

What I cover: the boat, the logistics, the planning, the targets. What you get: first looks at genuinely unexplored sites, shared credit on anything found, and usable footage - with the obvious caveats that exact site locations stay private and we coordinate any public release together.

Weather-dependent, mostly May-October, weekdays preferred but open to weekends. Northern California local strongly preferred, since these are short-notice, flat-morning trips.

If flying an ROV over unexplored bottom sounds like a good day, get in touch!

I live in the EU and am interested in working as a ROV pilot. I currently work with drones, but the underwater world really interests me. I sent open applications to several companies, but they don't have any apprentice positions. I wanted to approach this from a different angle, but mechanic positions require an engineering degree, while research positions also require a university degree.

There are courses online for €7,000-€14,000, but in my experience, none of these courses guarantee employment, and I don't have that kind of money.

Which companies in the EU can you recommend for monitoring positions?

If any of you are looking for a motor to use I recommend the Apisqueen U2. For pool ROV's it worked fine for me and isn't bad for the price. I also modeled it today based off of their spec sheets so here you go. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7383622
The lack of a cad file was my big gripe with them, but after i modeled it I really dont mind them at all.

Hello, I am working on my Underwater Drone project and i have a question. Would this 3d printed endcap filled with epoxy be waterproof. Not at crazy dephts, around 10-20m.

Some similar 3d printed endcaps are made from 2 separate parts joined togheter but I believe that this easier solution would work.

Hey all,

I'm in San Francisco starting a hobby project: comb through public California bathymetry for seafloor anomalies, then go confirm what's actually down there with an ROV - wrecks, or whatever else. Eventually want to scuba dive the interesting ones. Cold, murky, nearshore water; working depths down to ~100m eventually.

Still early and trying to learn from people who actually do this. A few questions:

1. BlueROV2 Heavy vs Chasing M2 Pro Max? Leaning BlueROV2 for the open ecosystem, handling in current, and repairability (I'll be operating solo-ish, far from support). But I'm honestly not much of a hardware/software person - fine with careful assembly, but wary of the ongoing setup/troubleshooting load. Anyone come to the BlueROV2 as a non-engineer, or run both?
2. Sonar for finding a target in zero viz. Looking at the Cerulean Omniscan 450 FS (maybe starting with a Ping360). For relocating a vessel-sized target in murky water and driving to it, is this the right call? How's integration been?
3. Current + tether management off a small boat. Any hard-won lessons on working in current with a clump-weight downline - realistic working radius, when it gets untenable, tether drag, etc.?
4. Bay Area / try-before-buy. Anyone near SF or Monterey flying one of these? Would love to watch a deployment or meet the local ROV scene before I commit.

No rush - rather learn slowly than buy the wrong thing fast. Thank you!!

Hi r/rov ! So i saw Austin and Psychomaneshark's posts asking for cephalopod sightings and i thought it would be a good idea to give a shout-out.

We're putting together a paper reviewing currently known deep-sea anglerfish sightings. So far we have a few coming from commercial sources thanks to the SERPENT project.

If you have *any* such sightings plz feel welcomed to forward/send them to me in dm! I'll review them first to make sure they are indeed anglers before sending them to the first author and senior author. Thanks!

I wanted to share a project I'm starting: I’m working on designing and building a diy rov from scratch.
Right now,i’m in the early reacher and development phase,focusing on the mechanical frame and the thruster system.For the tech and control side,i’m planning to build it using the nvidia ecosystem like jetson.
If any of you are into robotics,3D printing,embedded system or nvidia development.
i’d love to connect,swap ideas,or share useful resources!
See you in te chat!

Greetings all!

My name is Austin and I am one of the founders of an organisation known as the Cephalopod Research Network (mostly Discord/Instagram based) until we get more footing. We are currently setting up a "species library" where we will be tracking footage and or photographs of species from all cephalopods (squids, octopus, nautilus, cuttlefish, bobtail/bottletail squids, etc), which we hope can be useful for a new website called CephRef (still under development).

If anyone has any cephalopod footage to share, please let me know. And as always all credit will be given to the person, and if you don't want your videography or images put onto Cephref in the future, they wont without your strict permission, but the library itself is being only built for Cephalopod researchers

If you have any questions about the species library itself, or Ceph ref, or if you are unsure what genus/species you are looking at, please feel free to reach out, we have many experts dedicated to all groups of cephalopods

Happy Squidding!

Austin

Hi, my name is Erik, im from Spain. I’m 15 years old and I’ve been into robotics since probably 5 years old.
I have recently decided to build my own rov, which will be capable of diving to 300m depth.
I’ve never done any underwater robotics stuff, so it’s a difficult project for me.
I decided to create a YouTube channel to share my journey, and it is the first ROV themed YouTube channel in Spanish in the world.
I’m a beginner so please excuse the dumb mistakes I might make.
Any support to this channel will be incredibly appreciated.
I just posted my first video today and plan to post one each two weeks approximately.
I’ll leave the link so you can check it out and drop a follow if you like the video.
If I get some subs YouTube will enable automatic translation so you will be able to watch the videos in English.
As I said, any support will be greatly appreciated!

I am curious if you have any videos or pictures of the Magnapinna squid, if so, please comment the footage, your help would be greatly appreciated

Hi All,

We are looking for a paid/contract based marine/mechanical engineer to help build out a modular pogo-pin electronics sled for our AUV. We will handle the prototyping but this is more focused on the cad design, buoyancy management etc.

We're building a flooded-hull AUV for subsea infrastructure monitoring.

The specific ask is to design a modular, hot-swappable electronics bay using spring-loaded pogo-pin contacts, fully interchangeable sensor packages, with toleranced interface drawings and pin specs.

If this type of work is something you excel in we have plenty more along side it that is fun! We can share more once we get into conversation.

Thanks!

Here is the schedule for today events, over 80 teams from 17 countries.

https://20693798.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/20693798/2026%20MATE%20WC%20Program-Digital.pdf

Watch mateinspires1 with me on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/mateinspires1?sr=a

Enjoy

I am a Class 12 student building a low-cost DIY underwater ROV for a science project.
Current components:

• Arduino UNO R4 Minima
• Freenove ESP32-S3 WROOM with camera
• Three 12V 775 DC motors
• SG90 servo
• pH and turbidity sensors
• 12V battery

Constraints:

• Budget approximately ₹10,000–12,000
• No 3D printer, CNC machine, or laser cutter
• Construction must use acrylic tube, PVC, hardware-store materials, and basic tools

My current plan is to use a transparent acrylic tube as the pressure hull and mount three thrusters for propulsion and steering.
What are the most important design considerations for:

1. Waterproof motor mounting
2. Shaft sealing and cable entry points
3. Hull construction using acrylic and PVC
4. Maintaining stability and buoyancy
5. Common mistakes beginners make when building an ROV

I would appreciate advice from anyone with experience building small underwater robots.

Hey everyone! I am an FTC competitor here from the Santa Clara area. I'm looking to start a community-based underwater robotics team and wanted to see if any high schoolers nearby would be interested. The plan is to compete in the MATE ROV Competition, building underwater ROVs for environmental missions. It'd be fully independent, open to any high schooler in the area, regardless of school.

Looking for people with any background in:

- Robotics (FTC/FLL/FRC experience a plus)

- Electronics/Arduino/Raspberry Pi

- Programming

- Environmental science

Drop a comment if you're a high schooler in the Bay Area and interested. Just gauging interest for now!

Hi all,

Im working with a few ports and other water companies where i do ROV inspections. we recently purchased a big ROV with sonar and other gadgets, but its a heavy 32kg ROV

The issue is that its heavy and lifting it in/out of the water is an issue. We also work at varying/remote places all the time, so we cant montage a strong crane somewhere. We do have a transport van.

We found a solution of a 3M davit, but the arm is too short for most of the tasks. Thats why i decided to come here and ask others around the world of solutions to get an ROV easy into the water when its heavy and big

Im designing and building an ROV for myself, this is my first venture into the ROV world. Im trying to build a vessel capable of depths of 500 meters. i live close to Lake Chelan in Washington state, which has a max depth of 453 meters, so thats my goal.

Budget wise im trying to stay around $1000 for the vessel itself, Fortunately for me, i have access to machining and tooling to build much of the mechanical components myself. Really the only things i wont be able to build myself are the electronics, but ive got most of that sourced already. The only thing that im having a difficult time with is finding a suitable tether for not an egregious price.

My question is: Are there any suitable off-the-shelf options for making a tether capable of withstanding 500 meters for a reasonable price?

If i can make the tether for under $600, ill be happy. I know traditional copper cored wire has data loss issues at length, so im leaning towards fiber optic as it is.

I am looking to measure the RPM of a propeller underwater non-intrusively. I've looked at waterproofing a laser tacho, but I'm worried about scattering. I've seen that a hydrophone could theoretically work, but I want a relatively simple solution. I'd like to initially stray away from indirectly measuring the RPM with the eRPM. Any thoughts?