Ah parts are parts, but these parts can bankrupt my little Sea Scout project rather quickly. So, I need to make as many parts as I can myself. So, I need to find some creative alternatives.

Thrusters:

Well, I'm going to have to power this ROV with some type of thrusters. I can buy them from VideoRay for about $220 a piece, but they would be too small and underpowered. In this project they are built from electric trolling motors.

After the trolling motors are stripped down, the motors are housed in a pvc pipe with a shaft seal. That sounds simple enough, but actually building them may be easier said than done. They have to withstand an enormous amount of water pressure while constantly being able to operate at high rpm's.

Ed and Dale Jacobs have researched and designed their own motor seals. Many of these parts are turned on a lathe to close tollerences.

Buoyancy Floatation:

I know that I'm going to need some type of buoyancy floatation for the ROV. I must construct this floatation myself, because there won't be an off the shelf part for such a custom made ROV. I can use one of two methods for this vital part of the ROV. First, I can model a nice sleek shape out of expensive foam blocks and then spend a great deal of time fiberglassing over it. The other idea is to use large diameter pvc pipes. These are much cheaper and faster to build. These pipes come in different pressure strengths too. Since I don't have a lot of time or money to devote to floatation, or any other aspect of this project, I'll be going with the pvc pipes. It will be very important to determine the exact amount of buoyancy that I need and how it affects the balance of the ROV. These requirement will change as I add on more equipment, so it will be even more important to have the cheapest method of buoyancy available.

Tether:

This is another area of great expense. I need a cheaper way of going about hooking up a tether from the control room onboard Morris to my ROV. Remember, the Morris is a 125 foot ship with a tall deckhouse. I'm going to need about 100 feet of cable just to run from the control room aft of the pilot house to the boat deck, up the boom, and down to the water's edge. Note: This part of the cable doesn't have to be buoyancy neutral in salt water, but it's still has to be factored in. It then needs to go about 300 feet down, and then another 200 feet of cable will be needed to maneuver the ROV in a circumference area from there. That means that I would like to have over 600 feet of cable.
Buying a commercial grade tether at $10 per foot would solve so many problems for me, but that would mean spending over $6000 just on that one system! I'm just gonna have to make my own tether too. Fortunately, I just got a 400 foot tether system donated to Ship 13 from the designers of WARREN's sister rov JANET. This was a huge donation towards my budget and a huge curtail in construction time for me.
The tether has two main power cables that also act as the conduit for the multiplex radio control system.
WARREN will be powered by four each 12 volt DC marine grade batteries. When wired together in series these batteries will produce 48 volts DC. After voltage drain through over 400 feet of copper wire, WARREN will get a healthy 12 volts DC to run on.
I used an updated version of the 1917 Radio Flyer toy wagon to hold the batteries. It has air tires for a nice ride with a low center of gravity. I can also pull and steer it along docks without problems. Other carts were not built as tough to handle the battery weight and cost more money.

Cameras:

I'll need to buy a camera. That's a just a fact. I think that it needs to be a video camera for a couple of good reasons. The ROV pilot needs to see what's going on in real time so that he or she can maneuver the ROV safely. The Scouts also need to see what's going on during the dive from one moment to the next so that studing our oceans can be fun and interesting. A still camera, either digital or one that uses film can be of use too, but we really need a video system on board the ROV. A black and white video system is much cheaper than a color one, but the better the video system is the more fun and interesting the dive will be. Fortunately, as the video technology gets better, the price of older units drop. That's good news for me, because I will probably be able to scrounge up a used video system for not too much money. Maybe it will have one color video camera and one monochrome one. Whichever type it will have, I'm going to have to make an underwater video camera housing for it. I would hate for a homemade camera housing to fail. That would certainly spell doom for the camera.

Lights:

I also need to make my own lights for this ROV. The same situation applies to the video lights as it does to the video camera. It's cheaper to make my own, but it better not fail. Plans exist for homemade underwater lights just like they do for camera housings. The plans for both are very simular to each other and involve a great deal of pvc piping. It shouldn't be too difficult to work out these plans so that I can attach lights to the ROV. I haven't priced commercial underwater lights yet, but I have a feeling that when I do I will be sticking to the pvc pipes.

Some friends from work helped seal the wires coming into the pvc containers. We used a blue two part epoxy around the wires where they pass through the brass fittings. We then primed and glue sealed the caps on. All of the lights are now completed thanks to Captain Stew, Captain Scot, and Captain Jennifer.

One accessory option that I added is a laser scale. The laser scale will project a laser grid of two square feet without distorting at different distances. This will provide a known laser light scale on objects regardless of their distance. We will then be able to estimate the size of an underwater object.

Manipulator Arm:

I may want to add on a remotely operated robotic manipulator arm at one time in the future. These arms are impossible to purchase on my budget- even with addional funding. I would have to build it from scratch if I really wanted one. They are extremely complicated, expensive, and time consuming to build as well. The only answer is to build a simple ridged pole design with a two-sided gripper. This would mean having to move the ROV around rather than the arm, but I can make the arm from cheap metal tubing and the gripper hand from a modified a clamping tool.