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Some fathers and sons play catch. Electrical engineer Jason Rollette and his 12-year-old son Trevor are a little more ambitious. Hoping to explore the lakes and rivers near their Milwaukee home, they’ve built their own underwater remote-operated vehicle, or ROV. Controlled and powered by a laptop, their ROV can swim more than a quarter of a mile, to depths of 250 feet, while a home-surveillance camera sealed inside sends a live feed to the pilots onshore.

  • Dept: You Built What?!
  • Project: homemade spy sub
  • Cost: $300
  • Time: 4 days
  • Difficulty: easy | | | | | hard (Editor’s note: 4/5)

The camera, electronics, and lights fit inside 2- to 4-inch-diameter PVC piping. The pipes had watertight O-rings at their joints, so Rollette created windows from Plexiglas and screwed them onto the ends. Bilge pumps—which typically pump water out of a boat—act as thrusters, each spitting out up to 1,250 gallons an hour in different directions through plastic tubes. He plans to attach a motorized claw for grabbing treasure.

The trickiest part of the build proved to be the computer control. Rollette isn’t a programmer, so he recruited help through his blog (rollette.com). Thanks to volunteers, he and Trevor now steer the craft with a gaming joystick while monitoring video—as well as depth, compass heading, and other navigation details—on their laptop. The next step, suggested by Trevor: CO2-powered torpedoes… you know, just in case.

How it works

  • Thrust: Six bilge pumps, mounted on ceiling-tile grates that sit between the pipes, force water through one of six plastic tubes, pushing the vehicle left or right and forward or backward or changing the angle of its dive.
  • Control: A joystick steers the rig, and an interface on the laptop lets the driver zoom the video or snap a photo.
  • Communications: Video, power and navigation info are all transmitted over a quarter-mile-long Ethernet cable in a waterproof sleeve.

Photos of the sub

The white PVC pipe frame of a homemade ROV.
The frame of the ROV is made from 2- and 4-inch PVC pipes. Courtesy of Jason Rollette
Two lights and a camera for a homemade ROV.
The ROV’s lights (taken from an everyday flashlight) and camera (center) are mounted on strips and placed inside the PVC frame. Courtesy of Jason Rollette
A yellow homemade ROV on the ground with its lights on.
With the batteries installed, the sub’s lights provide illumination for the forward-mounted camera. Courtesy of Jason Rollette
A software interface for a homemade ROV.
The sub is controlled through a software interface (video from the sub is displayed in the black box). Courtesy of Jason Rollette
A yellow PVC homemade ROV on a gray carpet.
Bilge pumps mounted on a ceiling tile grate provide thrust. Courtesy of Jason Rollette
Two bilge pumps that serve as the thrusters of a yellow homemade ROV.
Hoses are attached to the bilge pumps, creating thruster nozzles. Courtesy of Jason Rollette
A black thruster nozzle at the end of a hose running from a bilge pump on a yellow homemade ROV.
A closer look at one of the thruster nozzles. Courtesy of Jason Rollette

This story has been updated. It was originally featured in the August 2006 issue of Popular Science magazine.