Battery Behaviour
Hand Controller
Battery Icon
The battery icon will always be green, until the ROV sends a ‘battery critical’ message turning the icon red
The ‘fullness’ of the icon is based on a ‘percent full’ number that the ROV determines and sends to the hand controller
Battery Critical
Battery Depleted
Backwards Compatibility
The hand controller will maintain backwards compatibility with the old battery messages.
The new ROV code will only send the new battery message.
If you have a controller with old software connected to an ROV with new code, you will need to update the controller software.
ROV Behaviour
When the ROV’s battery voltage goes below the ‘battery critical’ threshold, it will only send a message; the user will still be able to operate the ROV normally
When the ROV’s battery voltage goes below the ‘battery empty’ threshold, the rov will disable its motors and lights
For the Rev and Pivot, whichever battery has a lower voltage will determine whether the critical/empty state is triggered.
If the battery voltage increases high enough above the ‘empty’ threshold, (ie when charging), it will re-enable the motors and lights
Voltage Thresholds
Compensated voltages.
G3
The G3 thresholds have been updated, but the timing of the critical and empty warnings should be the same as before. Based on a production run test, the ‘critical’ threshold corresponds to 2 minutes before the ‘empty’ warning, and the ‘empty’ threshold corresponds to 2 minutes before the BMS kicks in.
REV & PIVOT
The Rev and Pivot thresholds were determined during production run tests. The ‘empty’ threshold corresponds to 1 minute before the battery BMS kicks in, and the ‘critical’ threshold corresponds to 5 minutes before the ‘empty’ threshold.
We are aiming for the ‘critical’ threshold to correspond to roughly 5-10 minutes of remaining use. This will of course vary a lot, due to:
How the user drives the ROV
ROV’s configuration and additional add-ons
Age of the batteries
Temperature