Choosing our Control and Communications Board

One of the first steps in this project was to choose a Control and Communications platform. Along with mechanical testing of propellors and motors we needed to start desinging our CPU. After researching various different types of micro controllers we chose to use the Raspberry Pi B. This was the best option for our central computation board because of its extensive documentation online. Obviously though, the Raspberry Pi couldn't be used for everything on our ROV. We needed another board that would be able to take sensory readings and relay them to the Pi.  We ended up choosing the Arduino UNO for this. Like the RPi, the Arduino UNO has a large online community and extensive documentation explaining anything you can think of. 

Below is a useful chart comparing the Arduino UNO, Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBone. 

There are a few other reasons for choosing the Pi. The first reason  is it's cost  relative to its computing power and capabilities. We believe that this board is able to offer many things others do while also giving us the cheapest product. The second reason why we chose the Raspberry Pi is, as we explained above, because of its extensive online doxumentation. There are hundreds of websites, blogs, and posts dedicated to the Raspberry Pi. We knew that the magnitude of data on the Pi would help us greatly as none of us have much prior experience configuring a computer. 

We would also recommend the Raspberry Pi to anybody who is looking to have a good time learning the tricks of the Raspberry Pi, but also to anybody who wants to create an advanced robotics system and is looking for the right computer. 

Raspberry Pi Model B