Hey guys! Rusty here at Blue Robotics with an exciting new product:
The Ping Sonar!
The Pink Sonar is a single beam echosounder and altimeter, At the
simplest, that means it sends out an acoustic pulse and listens back for an
echo to return. With that data it provides a distance measurement to the
strongest echo as well as the full echo response which can be plotted like the
display of a fishfinder sonar. Before I go into details here's a quick demo of
the Ping in action on the BlueROV2.
Here you can see an echo response while the ROV is moving up and down in a steel
dive tank. The Ping has a bottom finding algorithm that locks onto the strongest
response and provides a measured distance and confidence.
The Ping works great is an altimeter on the BlueROV2. But, it can be used in a
wide variety of other applications from obstacle avoidance to tidal monitoring
to autonomous terrain-following. I'll go into some more details starting with the
hardware. The Ping has an anodized aluminum case with a sonar transducer on
one side. On the other side are four tapped holes and the Ping comes with a
mounting bracket that makes it easy to install on the BlueROV2 and in other
applications. The Ping comes with a one meter cable with a pre-installed cable
penetrator and is rated to an operating depth of 300 meters. The sonar transducer
operates at a frequency of 115 kHz, away from the frequencies typically used
by boat echosounders, to minimize interference. It has a measurement range of
30 meters and a beam width of about 30 degrees. The Ping uses 5 volt power and
communicates through a serial port interface that connects directly to
microcontroller devices like an Arduino as well as a computer through a USB to
serial adapter. To make that as easy as possible we're
also launching a compact USB to serial and RS-485 adapter today. This board has
a micro USB port on one end and can connect to standard TTL serial devices
like the Ping as well as RS-485 devices which includes many subsea sensors and
tools. Devices like the Ping connect through a JST GH connector on the end
but the board also has through holes for standard header pin connections. Once
you've got the Ping connected to your device or computer there are a few ways
to use it. We recommend getting started with Ping Viewer, a new open-source
application that we've built from the ground up to support the Ping.
Ping Viewer runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux and makes it easy to get connected to the
Ping to view and record data and change settings. Ping Viewer supports direct
connections to the Ping but also supports network connections through the
BlueROV2's Companion web interface so that you can connect to the Ping onboard
the ROV without using any extra wires in the tether. The Ping communicates with
Ping Protocol, a simple and open source binary protocol that transmits data
messages efficiently. We have Arduino and Python libraries for Ping Protocol
available as well as example code that makes it easy to get connected. Using the
Arduino library one of our engineers, Brian, built a makeshift tidal monitor. In
addition to the Ping, it uses one of our 3" enclosures, a battery, pressure
sensor, and an Arduino with a data logging shield. We
deployed it on the ocean floor with the Ping pointed up to measure the distance to
the water surface. We recovered it with the ROV and gripper a few days later
after it had logged several thousand data samples. Here you can see the result
with the Ping's measurements showing the tidal levels throughout the day. At a
higher frequency you can see the amplitude of swells passing by the tidal
monitor and how they change from day to day. With the launch of Ping and Ping
Viewer we're trying something new by launching them in "beta", meaning that
they're well tested and we're confident in them but we expect there to be a lot of
changes in software, firmware, and features in the near future. We've tested
in ways that are accessible to us but we're eager to incorporate feedback from
you about what can still be improved. Both the Ping and the USB to Serial
Adapter are available on our store today and the Ping Viewer application can be
downloaded from the product pages and from Github. That's all I've got for
today. Thanks for watching and see you next time!