[Zack] Okay, I'm dropping it.
Ready?
[Dan] Yeah, go ahead.
So right now I'm in a place called the Isla De Las Mujeres, right next to next to Cancun.
There's this place called the Underwater Museum where there are a bunch of statues buried
down to kind of help, you know, the wildlife and stuff under the ocean.
Normally when I review drones, they are the kind of drones that fly around in the air.
Today, we have an underwater drone that films things underwater in 4K.
It should be pretty interesting.
So after we check out the footage, we'll take the drone apart and see what the water protection
is actually like.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
One of the things that's really hard with this actually...cuz like with the drone you
can actually see which way it's oriented in the sky... you know, the lights on the propellers
and stuff like that.
With this, you don't really know what direction that it's going when you're in the water because
there's no way to orient yourself except for when it reaches the surface.
[Music]
[Dan] I've got to check this out for myself.
I'm going in!
[Music]
Inside the box we have the drone itself.
This thing is legit.
Here we have one of the vents for the propellers.
So when it's sinking down, it's sucking the water up and shooting it out the top of the
drone.
Then we have the connector here which goes to the tether into the battery pack.
And the signal where it stores all the information.
We have the propellers in the back here.
Underneath the drone, here's the propeller that brings it up and down.
This is a sonar fish finder.
It tells us the water temperature and finds fish down to one hundred and thirty feet.
And then this is a little magnet on the front, so if you had like bait or something and you
need to drop while fishing, you can just release this from the controller and drop the bait.
In the front of the drone we have two headlights – LED it looks like – and then we have
a 4K camera.
And that camera is on a 2 axis gimble.
The tether's 225 feet and it goes into that receiver there.
Then the controller is kind of like the DJI set up where you have the mount for your phone,
and then you have the controllers there on the side.
Pretty sweet.
So this thing right here is called the base station.
It's actually like the WiFi emitter, cuz signals underwater don't travel.
So Bluetooth and WiFi just don't work under water very far.
So with the tethering cord – that's why we have that.
And then this transmits WiFi into the controller just like the DJI controller does.
Data storage for the footage and things, that's all stored inside the drone with internal
storage.
So there's no removable SD card slot.
It makes sense though because the whole thing is waterproof instead of water-resistant.
So having the SD card slot would have been really inconvenient as far as waterproofing
that goes.
One of the hugest perks about this whole set up though, is that the charging port, which
is also the same thing for the tether, the battery inside this thing can last for 2 hours.
Imagine a drone in the sky being able to last that long.
Probably one of the reasons the battery lasts so long is that the water is holding most
of the weight of the drone, and it doesn't need to support itself in the sky.
And the propellers are pretty small.
[Zack] Okay, I'm dropping it.
Ready?
[Dan] Yeah, go ahead.
[Music]
When you're driving the drone, you can't go left or right to circle around something,
you can only go forward and back and then like twist the front left and right.
So it's a little bit different than flying in the air.
So it does make things a little bit harder to control, but it's not too bad.
This thing lights up blue, but like I was explaining earlier, it doesn't really orient
yourself when you're in the water because you literally can't see it.
So basically you're just looking around you in the water, maybe you can find the bottom
of the boat you're in, but it's really hard to tell distance and stuff when you're flying
this underwater.
[Music]
So now that' we've seen what this can do and we've explored the outside of it, you know
it's time to explore the inside.
Let's take this thing apart and see what makes it so waterproof.
One thing to remember as we take apart this PowerRay is that it's waterproof to 30 meters,
or 98 feet, depending on what part of the world you're diving in.
Water-resistant cell phones like the iPhone or the Galaxy phones, are only water-resistant
to 1 or 1 and a half meters.
That's a huge difference.
It will be interesting to see what's inside.
There are several screws holding down the exterior plastic.
These are mostly for decoration and physical protection, since there's no waterproofing
around the exterior edges.
It'll unsnap from the lower body exposing the more important components.
There are some weights attached to the lower shell.
This might keep it oriented in the water, bottom side down.
Or it might also be because this is a preproduction unit that isn't quite finished.
There is a final version for sale on Amazon today, already, and I'll link that in the
description.
But this one's just a functional prototype.
The three different propellers are now exposed.
All the motors are concealed inside the watertight back plastic housing.
The other side of the white shell can also pull away from the watertight internals.
And now it's definitely looking more like a submarine than a drone.
There are a total of 46 hexagonal 2.0 screws holding the two plastic halves together after.
After all those screws are out, the top half can lift away.
There's still wires attached to that top tethering point.
As far as waterproofing goes, a thick green rubber ring surrounds the entire outer lip
of the PowerRay.
That rubber gets smashed by the 46 screws around the edge, keeping all of the water
from ingressing.
There's also a shiny grease covering that outer lip as well.
Water and oily substances don't mix, so there are multiple waterproofing barriers at work
here.
There are 4 screws holding down the main board to the plastic body.
And this would be a good time to mention that any time you take something waterproof or
water-resistant apart, it'll never be water-resistant again until it's resealed.
So with this particular project, I don't plan on reassembling this drone since it's already
been compromised.
I'll just keep it for parts.
I unplugged a few of the signal cables.
Interestingly enough, there's an Ethernet port on the motherboard.
That explains the long tether and how that signal works.
I've never seen that inside of a drone before.
There are a few more plugs leading off for the fish finders and front camera, and then
the whole motherboard lifts off exposing the battery.
Now this is pretty interesting.
The battery that's held in place by the 4 smaller hexagonal 1.5 screws is the same battery
that fits inside the Power Egg, and aerial drone made by the same company.
Inside the underwater drone, the battery is not removable, but inside the Power Egg, it
is.
It's smart using the same battery across multiple products, it saves a lot of money.
All three of the propellers have black wires connecting to the small circuit board in the
front, right next to that 4K camera and the front LED headlights.
The drone is already pretty sweet, but if I could add one more thing, it would be the
ability to float sideways instead of just forward and backwards.
It would require additional motors, but it would be nice to have more control while filming.
It was super fun to take apart something that's actually waterproof.
The waterproofing on this PowerRay is pretty intense, and I think it's time to go wash
my hands.
I'll toss a link in the video description with current pricing for this thing.
Whether it's just for fun or actual industrial underwater inspections, it's a pretty useful
little tool.
Thanks a ton for watching, and I'll see you around.