Thruster Deck Mount Example
The thruster deck of a BlueROV2 Heavy provides a convenient mounting location for the Tracker 650, as shown in the photo below. Read further for some insights in how to make this mounting location work for you. In the picture, the Tracker 650 is the cylindrical object labeled "R&D T650". In addition to being convenient, the elevated mounting takes up some of the required minimum standoff distance of the Tracker 650, allowing the ROV to fly closer to the bottom.
Cerulean sells a 3D printed mount for the BlueROV2 Heavy thruster deck as shown in the photo below, and we also publish a CAD model of this part so you can print your own.
When installed on the thruster deck (next photo), you will notice the alignment arrow is not parallel with the vehicle X axis. It is rotated 30 degrees about the Z (vertical) axis. This is for two reasons. The first is to resolve an interference between the Tracker 650 cable and the thruster immediately aft of the Tracker 650. The second reason is illustrated in the next photo.
The second reason for the rotation is to allow the inboard acoustic beam (blue cones) to pass though the frame of the ROV, as illustrated in the rendering below. If the X axis of the Tracker 650 was aligned with the ROV's X axis, two of the acoustic beams would be occluded by the ROV frame.
There are two important points to account for:
The 30 degree Z rotation offset requires you enter an offset into the Tracker 650, using the GUI in SonarView, the configuration web page hosted by the Tracker 650, in the mounting rotation section , or by sending a SET-SENSOR-ORIENTATION command (all of these are needed only one time since it will be stored in non-volatile memory) with parameters (0, 0, 30). If the DVL was flipped around to the port thruster deck the arrow would be offset from straight astern by 30 degrees and the parameters to SET-SENSOR-ORIENTATION would be (0, 0, -150).
You must ensure the acoustic path through the frame is not obscured by cables or other items.
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