ROV Startup
Last updated
Last updated
The ROV takes a long time to boot after power-on, sometimes as long as three minutes. During this time, it cannot interact with other subsystems. Even though the lights are blinking, it's inaccessible.
You can determine when the ROV is online by repeatedly trying to access its webpage at http://192.168.2.2, assuming you have not changed its default IP address. If you have changed it use that changed address.
Once booted, the ROV can do basic manually controlled functions such as drive around, but it cannot geolocate itself, or dead-reckon, or position-hold. Before it can do any of these it needs to have a global origin.
The ROV internally keeps track of its location on a local coordinate system that is a rectangular grid whose plane is tangent to the world at its current location. The global origin is a (latitude, longitude) location on the face of earth that the ROV and external systems use to reference the origin of the local grid. It's a bit arcane and you don't really need to understand it except that the ROV is unable to report its location either in latitude/longitude or in its local grid coordinates until an external system provides it with a global origin. It will also refuse to use DVL inputs to do position hold until it receives a global origin.
In addition to the global origin, in order for the ROV to report its location to QGroundControl or other software, it needs to have an initial position estimate from an external system.
The key takeaway is the ROV starts up and can do basic functions, but to do more complicated things or show its location, it needs an external source to provide the global origin and initial position. The ROV Locator subsystem can do this in an Omnitrack system if it has a GNSS compass subsystem and satellite fix.