Exploring the ocean with Raspberry Pi–powered marine robots | Hacker News Reader

Exploring the ocean with Raspberry Pi–powered marine robots

raspberrypi.com

117 pointsBrajeshwar18 comments

CUREE, the Curious Robot for Ecosystem Exploration, is another autonomous underwater vehicle built around the Raspberry Pi 4: https://warp.whoi.edu/curee/

Blue Robotics (bluerobotics.com) is also using Pi, for their BlueRov and survey boat (BlueBoat) - they’re quite nice to use (and not toys… you can add sonar, dvl, usbl locator to go at depth - max 600m with the kit)

I’m also starting to build other water/ground vehicles for underground exploration - communication and localisation are challenging, without speaking about navigation on uncertain terrain. Pi are accessible and cheap, and the Pico’s are also very useful to interface with the motors, sensor and so on.

Nice but at $5000 I wonder if there exists something more affordable for someone interested in tinkering with small boats/subs in small ponds.

Sadly no — you have toys (none open source and reliability is... well, let's say that the repair are regular and out of support) or you can try to create yourself a waterproof solution (that's complex). Most connector cost a lot, 3D printing is not really an option (especially at depth), pressure is not joke to deal with... And then you'll have to fight with the environment (algae, plants), water salinity, acidity and so on. Other system at the same level costs more — I think the next one is at 25k without option. Don't forget that if for any reason you need to reach it at depth, you'll have to dive. Please don't do that alone...

It's a high cost hobby :(

I think it's so cool you could in theory buy a satellite module eg. $250 break out board from spark fun, plug it in and be talking to a robot in the middle of the ocean. I wondered about the legal aspect, can you do that? Just release something into the wild.

Yes you can. However, international waters are a physically challenging environment and getting there requires navigating national waters which have regulatory restrictions. Of course, enforcement is probably nonexistant if you're small, barely visible, and heading straight out to sea... so, solve the "invisible awesome robot that can survive in tough conditions" problem, stock the "multi-day batteries for energy continuity" load, buy the "expensive communications" solution, and then yeah - you too can play with the big boys in the bathtub. Or ... just stick to your actual bathtub.

Coat the whole vessel in a couple mm of sylgard-184 and it'll last a century (or until it's beached).

Now I'm wondering, those people that sail say from SF to Hawaii in a small sailboat, do they do drop routes... "take my drone to the ocean and release it"

Uber for deployments to international waters. Love it. Vibecode that tomorrow.

Why not? I doubt there are any legal restrictions other than don't be a hazard to navigation. But it would probably be too small to be a hazard anyway, and likely too small to be noticed.

Anyone who would happen to come across it is likely to be suspicious of its origin and purpose, though.

I happen to drop equipment into the sea for a living on occasion, and we always paint it in garish yellow for visibility and label it clearly with contact info to allay suspicions. Typically "Scientific instrument - flux capacitor, Acme Co. - www.bar.org // foo@bar.org // 555-2368"

Also, we notify the coastal administration and the mapping agency so that an EfS (NOTMAR; Notices for Mariners) may be issued if they deem it necessary.

A cynical colleague suggested we had better label them 'Highly radioactive' to keep fishermen from picking them up and taking them apart out of curiosity...

I find another article linked from this one even more exiting: "BearID: Face recognition for brown bears" https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/bearid-face-recognition-for...

This is so cool! What are the cool projects in the space? I would love to start building and playing with these robots

I bet there are some people building cool things for narco cartels with similar parts..

I think its probably cheaper to pay one of your mules to transport it in a narco sub rather than try to buy a raspberry pi

The mules aren’t in the subs anymore. We’ve got Starlink now!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/11/colombia-narco...

Damn, they're evolving more than I thought. Is it possible to pull account information out of a starlink terminal?

Not as cool as robotics but we use Pi zero for audio playback for songbird research.

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