In the process of fitting the cameras into the front of the sub we had to take into account that they would be in boxes that we 3D print. The boxes will hold the cameras' control boards and will then be filled with epoxy. Putting them in epoxy makes them waterproof and thus allows us to flood the whole submersible. We created a box that had three separate compartments, two for the Raspberry Pi cameras and one for the webcam. On the back of the box there is a mount for the rod on the servo to attach to. It is impossible for this part to be printed in one piece so we broke it up into three separate pieces for printing. An image of the final potted camera setup is below:
We then moved on to printing the boxes for the embedded Linux microcomputers. We have two boxes, two for our Raspberry Pi's and one for the BeagleBone Black. Both containers are going to be filled with thermally conductive epoxy in order to keep out electronics cool. We decided to place the BeagleBone/shield combination face-up in the container while we put Raspberry Pi's upside down. This made the 3D printing a lot easier although it did add to the amount of epoxy we needed to use. An image of all three potted computers is below:
After creating the boxes we also needed to make a way to hold them in place. In the end we created three shelves we put the two RPi's on the top and bottom of the middle section and put the BeagleBone in the middle of the front section. We are also going to put the IMU on top of the BeagleBone so it doesn't need its own space.
