Fathom One | The Affordable, Modular, HD Underwater Drone

Update #6
almost 8 years ago – Thu, Jun 01, 2017 at 12:14:26 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Update #5
almost 8 years ago – Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 05:13:06 PM

Happy April everyone!

It’s incredible to think we’re closing in on the home stretch of the Fathom One project. We appreciate everyone being patient as we work up this update; we’ve been incredibly busy! So let’s jump in.

The design of the Fathom One has come a long way. Since the last prototype we showed you, we’ve made a few key improvements:

For starters, we’ve been able to verify our potting process not only makes the Fathom One the only “gasket-less” underwater drone in the world (which eliminates a whole host of failure modes), but it also makes the drone incredibly strong. Even under tremendous pressure, the drone’s hull resists any deflection. To put this in perspective, here you can see John providing a pressure test of his own: 

We’ve also upgraded the lens on each Raspberry Pi camera that goes into the Fathom One. This will allow for an upgraded field of view, taking it from 60 degrees that the stock lens provides, to a full 120-degree wide angle view. This will not only make piloting much easier, but it’ll also give your footage a more “epic” look!

To better accommodate these updated cameras, we've added new custom foam inserts to eliminate any glare produced by the onboard LED's:

We’ve worked extensively on the Fathom One’s motor control as well. Specialized gearing has been built into the Fathom One software, allowing you - the pilot - to choose between slow speed maneuvering, and top speed “sport mode"

Another new development is the modification of the F1’s tail thruster. Although we liked the aesthetic of the fins on the tail, there existed two main problems with that design: Number one, it took up a lot of space. Because it was so wide, it essentially took up the same amount of space as the drone’s body. Number two, it was simply too vulnerable. When we shipped a drone to Dubai for our competition (more on that later) we opened the case to find one of our tail thruster fins snapped off. We knew this wouldn’t do. So we’ve redesigned the tail to take up less space while increasing robustness. Check it out!

Aside from these developments, we’ve been working quite a bit on payload testing (i.e. how many things can we cram onto the F1’s rail system effectively). What we’ve come up with is pretty exciting. We’ve found that with a few minor DIY tweaks, you can use payloads well beyond what we first thought possible. Take this prototype rig for example that we've named "Frankenstein":

Hopefully, this gives you a little inspiration as to what’s possible using the integrated rail system. All it took was some industrial-strength velcro and pool noodle floats to compensate for the added weight of the accessories, and we were good to go.

You may have noticed we've been adding float pods to the top of the F1 as well. This allows us to get incredibly stable footage by better separating the drone's center of mass, and center of buoyancy. These will be integrated better than what you see in these prototypes - don't worry! We simply want to ensure that, no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to de-stabilize this drone.

Another question we've been getting quite frequently is how you can deal with piloting the drone in an area with a lot of weeds - so naturally, we put it to the test:

We were able to come to a few conclusions. The first, you simply have to be careful where you go. No matter how well we design the F1 to handle these conditions, if you fly through an area with a lot of weeds, you might get stuck. The second, if you do happen to find yourself in an area with a lot of weeds, the F1 is really good at powering through them. As you were able to see in the photo above, it takes a lot to bog the drone down. The third, the modular thruster system makes cleaning the drone extremely easy. Simply detach your thrusters, and "swish" them in fresh water to dislodge any entanglement you may have encountered.

We're now at the critical point in the campaign where we've been working tirelessly to prove out our manufacturing process to fulfill all those orders you've been so patiently waiting for. Our team has brought on the help of experts in this area to ensure we can produce each unit in a timely manner without compromising quality assurance.

As we move through this phase of the product development life cycle, we'll be keeping you well informed.

Now for some exciting new developments over at the Fathom Store! We've been getting some amazing feedback from the community as to what we should provide for accessories to make your experience with the Fathom One even more convenient. You've been asking, so we're excited to deliver!

First things first, we're excited to announce the addition of an official Fathom Travel Backpack to the product lineup! After trying out multiple options, we’ve found one that we think will work extremely well:

The second major addition to the Fathom Store (by popular demand) is tether extensions! You can now purchase tether in 50 foot (or 15 meters) sections to increase your freedom even further. 

You may also be wondering why the tether looks different from previous updates. There are two causes for this: strength and neutral buoyancy. We've taken the same data transmission cable as we showed previously, and given it an armor plating of UV-resistant, mold resistant, polypropylene to protect against breaks, while providing the floating ability to ensure the tether doesn't sink behind the drone, causing performance issues.

On a separate note, if you're interested in hearing about our team's trip to Dubai, head over to our blog page to read about the full trip! You can find the full write-up here.

Now for one of our favorite portions of the updates - the Biggest Challenges section. In this part of the update, we share some of our biggest struggles and how we've overcome them, giving you insight into the behind-the-scenes work over here at Fathom. Let's get to it:

The Problem: Setting up the Fathom One supply chain and manufacturing processes. Although this is a bit of an obvious issue that every hardware company faces at some point, it's no less daunting. This entire process consists of questions ranging from "where are we sourcing those molded parts?" to "what's the lead times on that transistor?", and everything in between. 

The Solution: Time, patience, and a ton of hard work. There's really no way around this. Each of our team members routinely pulls 12 to 16 hour days, never takes weekends, and has grown quite accustomed to working with experts to ensure our manufacturing start-up phase proceeds smoothly.

The Problem: Identifying every potential failure mode, and building in measures to ensure the drone you receive is the most robust product possible. 

The Solution: Something we like to call "torture testing". We've essentially - for lack of a better term - tortured every prototype that's been built to identify every way this product can possibly fail. With every iteration, new bugs have been identified and fixed, until, finally, we've come up with something that can withstand everything we've thrown at it. This has taken months of work, but we're extremely excited with what we've come up with (it was worth the lack of sleep).

The Problem: Tether gland corrosion after extensive use. We've found that after testing each drone for a few months, slight corrosion began to build up on the pins of the connector. This was a result of attaching and detaching the tether while it was still wet.

The Solution: Use a specialized anti-corrosive coating! This was an easy fix - but effective. Each drone's tether connection is now treated with an anti-corrosive material that'll prohibit any buildup during use.

That's it for now, but as always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions! It's been a long road to get to where we are now, but we can't emphasize how excited we are to get a Fathom One drone into the hands of you - our Fathom community. We see this as the start of something amazing; hundreds of people with the newfound ability to explore the world in an entirely new way, capturing amazing content, and sharing ideas on how we can make the Fathom One the best underwater drone in the world. It's all coming soon, so we hope you're ready!

Let's get out there and explore,

The Fathom Team

Update #4
about 8 years ago – Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 10:45:02 PM

Hey everyone! Thanks for being patient with us as we prepare this update! With our big Dubai competition coming up and exciting product development updates taking place, we've had our hands full. But nonetheless, we're happy to finally share our progress with you! Let's get to it:

Let’s talk about the big news first - beta evaluation units hitting the water! As we told you in our previous update, we’ve been working tirelessly to put the finishing touches on our final design, and we’re pretty happy with what we’ve done. To test performance, evaluate stability and buoyancy, as well as test our payload system, we’ve built the Fathom One Evaluation Vehicle (or the F1EV for short). Check it out:

 

 

 

Although the F1EV doesn’t look as pretty, it allows us to run our system through its paces. More importantly, it allows us to validate important maneuvering abilities that we promised to you early in our campaign. Let’s walk through them:

First, slow-speed control has been a topic brought up time and time again. Being able to control the drone at slow speeds allows for smoother footage, more thorough inspection of areas, as well as allowing the ability to be careful in sensitive areas (coral reefs, shipwrecks, etc.). In this footage we demonstrate how the drone can move slowly and carefully.

View Video

We’ve also built out LED “guards” to ensure - although they’re housed behind the same lens - the LEDs don’t cause glare in the camera feed.

For all you DIY’ers out there, we’ve had a lot of interest in releasing the specifications of the F1’s rail and thruster interface systems. By releasing these now, we hope that you’ll have built out amazing attachments and alternate thrusters to make the F1 even better than it already is. Here’s what you need to get started: https://grabcad.com/library/f1-payload-rail-1

 

 

 

 

We’ve already started planning a host of attachments, but we can’t wait to see what you come up with! If you’d like 3D CAD models of the interfaces, you can find them here: https://grabcad.com/library/f1-thruster-interface-1

Here's a little bit of inspiration!

 

We’ve also completed the design of the F1 buoy system. This design remains compact while allowing you to store your stock amount of tether externally to stay organized. Its simple design also allows for the tether to spool out automatically as the drone swims, ensuring you won’t have to have a buddy unspooling tether for you as you go:

 

 

 

 

 

Throughout this final development process, we knew we wanted to stay true to our promise that we would deliver the world’s most compact underwater drone available. Now that we’ve completed both the buoy and drone designs, we can confidently say we’ve delivered on that promise. Throw it in a backpack, duffle, or hard case, and you'll be off to your next adventure in no time. 

We’ve continued to make steady progress on the Fathom application as well. Now that the majority of the primary features have been completed, we’ve been pouring a lot of time into the details of the application. Check out your updated home screen!

A major addition has been the way we’ve been handling telemetry on the pilot screen. Instead of simply throwing a bunch of numbers at you, we’ve designed a much more intuitive system that delivers information in a way that is much easier to understand:

Your drone’s compass will become a crucial tool in navigating the underwater world. By using the compass, you know which way you went out, so you can know which way to return home. You’ll also be able to use it a tool for re-finding spots underwater that were of interest (i.e. turn east at the end of the dock, then head south once you hit the large rock). Because we’ve designed the interface to give you these headings in easy to interpret cardinal directions, you’ll become a proficient navigator in no time!

The next important piece of information to understand is the drone’s pitch. Sometimes when you’re in open water it can be difficult to know whether you’re going up or down when everything is blue! We’ve integrated a simple drone avatar in the top information bar to help guide you:

 

By giving you your pitch information in this way, you’ll know immediately if you’re diving, rising, or maintaining your depth. Speaking of depth, you’ll be able to monitor your depth carefully using the last important piece of telemetry displayed here:

Third, we’ve incorporated battery indicators to alert you when it’s time to come home, buoy wifi signal strength monitors to notify you when you’re getting out of range, and drone memory monitors that will notify you when video storage is getting low onboard the drone. All of this information will ensure that you have successful dives time and time again.

Another important update is the creation of the Fathom video download portal. This allows you to wirelessly view and download all of your video files directly from the drone on your laptop or desktop computer! To access the portal, simply turn the drone on and enter its IP address in the address bar of your computer’s web browser. You’ll then have access to your files for viewing or downloading.

Finally, we’ve built out a custom sensor calibration sequence that makes re-calibrating your drone exceedingly simple. Sensor calibration will be an important step in making sure your F1’s instrumentation is accurate, and is necessary to do once in awhile! You simply have to move your drone in various directions to allow the onboard sensors to collect the data needed to remain precise:

 

Now for the "Biggest Challenges" section of our updates. As we've said before, we want to make sure we not only keep you up to date with everything good happening with our development process, but also some of the challenges we run into. Without further ado, here are some of the biggest hurdles we've run into:

The Problem: Getting the drone balanced to enable smooth operation. It's of the utmost importance that the drone sit perfectly level in the water to ensure you can get great footage. When we put the first F1EV in the water, it went completely nose up on us! Obviously that wasn't ideal...

The Solution: After a good amount of tweaking both ballast and floats, we finally obtained perfect level. All that was necessary here was patience and time!

The Problem: Component sourcing! As every hardware startup knows, preparing your supply chain for full production can be a long, arduous process. The components we're using in the betas are easy to obtain in smaller quantities, but once we began to look for larger quantities, we quickly realized we'd have to come up with alternative solutions.

The Solution: Leveraging our company's high caliber network to bring on people that have done it before! Nothing can replace experience, and thankfully Fathom has a broad range of advisors that know their stuff when it comes to finding the right parts, in the right quantities. As we begin to set up for full production, these connections have proved to be invaluable.

The Problem: Nailing our unique drone sealing process. Because the Fathom One doesn't have gaskets like traditional ROVs, we've had to perfect the way the drone is being potted. Various issues began to arise like curing times, material weights, and hull adhesion.

The Solution: Again, patience and time! It took approximately five sample hulls to finally perfect the way we seal up each unit. What we finally created was a way to easily prep each hull to accept the drone's electronics and potting material.

That's it for now! This update is being sent out from the Chicago International airport as we prepare to leave for Dubai, so wish us luck! It also reminds us that none of this would be possible without you, our Fathom community. 

We have a lot of things coming in the next few weeks that we can't wait to show you, so stay tuned!

- John, Danny, Chris, and Matt

Update #3
about 8 years ago – Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 02:37:15 PM

It’s official. Time flies. 

It’s amazing to think that it’s already been three months since we closed the Kickstarter campaign and kicked off the final development of the Fathom One! In that time we’ve already seen our app take shape, a total revamp of the drone’s physical design, and a ton of amazing use cases for our technology develop. The best part is, we’re only getting started. 

Let’s jump in! 

First things first, let’s talk about where we’re at with the drone redesign. Since our last update, we’ve been spending a lot of time honing in design details and fleshing out our assembly process. Now for the exciting part – seeing the F1 take shape. Check out our updated F1 master prints: 

We’re incredibly excited about how this final design iteration is shaping up – it looks even better than the renderings so far! We’re giving the green light to our urethane mold manufacturer to begin pumping out beta parts so that we can begin assembling our beta units to be shipped out by the end of January.  

We’ve also been running component-level testing of our redesigned parts, most notably, the thrust modules. While we knew the new designs would offer an unparalleled amount of customization potential, we wanted to ensure we weren’t compromising performance. Come to find out, we significantly enhanced thruster performance through our redesign. After initial testing, we determined we can produce over a kilogram (or 2.2 lbs) of thrust per thruster. You can see our test setup here: 

Note that the thrust value you see on the scale should be multiplied by two to calculate the thrust produced by each of these thrusters. Take another look at this test from inside the tank!

Aside from all the progress on the plastic part design of the drone itself, we’ve also been pouring a lot of time into the design and assembly of the buoy. We’ve decided to run with an external spool design that will easily house all of your tether, while remaining portable. All you’ll have to do is plug it in, turn it on, and toss it in the water (or leave it on land if you don’t have a method of retrieval). Because there’s no external antennas or other components, there’s nothing to snag or break. This means you’ll have one tough buoy. But don’t take our word for it, check out the newest prototype!  

Another great feature of this buoy design is that it allows us to design mounts that turn it into a larger, mountable spool if you intend to use more tether. That means no matter how much tether you want to use, we’ll have your tether management covered. 

As we’ve mentioned before, the physical design of the drone and buoy are only half the story. Developing a simple, intuitive user interface is of the utmost importance in making this device one of the easiest drones to use in the world. Period. Over the past month we’ve designed and tested various control layouts beyond a simple dual-joystick configuration, and we think we’ve created something awesome. See for yourself:  

This new control method is incredibly simple, yet profoundly intuitive. It works like this: The left side of the screen has been allocated for throttle control, while the right side controls drone direction (pitch and yaw). Place your thumbs wherever you like; the guide will snap into place to fit your hand. This means you don’t have to worry about landing on small joysticks to pilot the drone - just place your fingers on the screen, and the controls will come to you.  Your left thumb will then become your throttle control, managing forward and reverse direction as well as speed:  

Your right thumb will then act as your directional control. Just like gamepad-type controllers, this will allow you to dive, rise, and turn left and right. See how it works:  

These two control methods combine to give you full, fine-tuned control of your F1, ensuring that whether you’re in open water or a tight space, you’re in control. Over the coming months, we'll be honing the aesthetics of the interface to make it as beautiful as it is functional.

But what if you don’t like using a touchscreen alone for control? We’ve got you covered. We’ve also finished physical controller integration, allowing you to use a Bluetooth controller if you prefer a more tactile piloting experience:  

Now let’s take it one step future. What if you not only want a more tactile piloting experience, but also a more immersive one? Enter the realm of incorporating first-person viewing goggles. By utilizing the HDMI output capabilities of Android and iOS smart devices, you can plug in select FPV goggles and truly immerse yourself in the underwater world. While using nothing but your smart device is perfectly fine for piloting your drone, this setup will truly provide the ultimate underwater experience.

This also means that if you want to broadcast your drone feed onto a larger monitor or TV, just plug it in and enjoy a larger view!  

Over the past month, we’ve also built out the “Dive Log” capabilities in the Fathom application. This will allow you to document your expeditions while you travel to new and exciting locations. It also allows you to remember geo-tagged dive locations, dates, depths, and other important data for your own reference, and to share with friends and the Fathom community.  

Per usual, there’s always a lot of exciting news to report outside of product develop. The biggest news we have to share with you is that Fathom has been invited to present the F1 at the “Drones for Good” competition in Dubai, UAE. This is incredibly exciting for a few reasons: first of all, it means we’ll be able to present the implications the F1 has in environmental and infrastructure monitoring to the international community. There’s also $1 million in research and development funds up for grabs as the top prize. Need we say more?  

We’ve also been in the process of onboarding our beta tester community. We’ve been fortunate enough to select a group of top-notch testers that will push the drone to its limits while collecting some incredible footage along the way. We’ll be sure to share their material with you as testing begins. We’d also like to invite anyone who is interested to join our beta tester community that we’ll draw from for future tests. Just because you don’t live in the Bahamas doesn’t disqualify you; we’re looking for a diverse group of users that want to use the drone for everything from checking out their local lake, to the most intense use cases.    

Now for our biggest challenges section. As we’ve told you before, no development process is without its setbacks. So instead of keeping these to ourselves, we choose to share them with you so you know exactly what’s happening behind the scenes. 

The Problem: Deciding on a final buoy design. We went back and forth on this aspect of the system design for a while. Do we sacrifice some portability of the buoy and internalize the tether, or do we make the buoy more portable and integrate a simple external spool to the buoy's design? 

The Solution: In the end, our choice became clear after rendering various design options. Preserve the buoy's portable nature and externalize the tether. We decided to run with this design for a few reasons: first, it'll minimize the physical footprint of the buoy for easier packing. It also allows us to handle various lengths of tether so we're not limited to the stock length provided with the F1. Lastly, it allowed us to ruggedize and simplify the design of the buoy to ensure it can handle the harshest of environments.

The Problem: Deciding what great use cases we can demonstrate at the "Drones for Good" competition in Dubai. We were thinking about building out pan/tilt cameras for inspection, sensor modules for ecosystem monitoring, even adding treads to the drone in place of thrusters for pipeline inspection! But with all the choices, it's tough to decide what's best...

The Solution: The Fathom community! All of you are an amazing group of explorers that are always coming up with great new uses for the F1. We'd love to get your thoughts as to what interesting use cases we can demonstrate at our big competition coming up in February! If you have ideas, be sure to post them under the "Use Cases" section of our forum. Here's a link: http://fathomdrone.com/forum#!/use-cases

The Problem: Honing our marketing and sales efforts to best spread the word about the Fathom One. We truly believe that we're developing a technology that's worth sharing, but it's tough without a dedicated marketing team. 

The Solution: We've begun to surround ourselves with fantastic mentors in the digital marketing and sales space, allowing us to focus our efforts as we begin to move towards our initial Kickstarter fulfillment. Having said that, we're always looking to learn more about what channels we can use to expand the public's knowledge of our product. If you have any suggestions, feel free to email [email protected]! 

The Problem: The close proximity of the "Edit" and "Publish" buttons on Kickstarter's update drafting page.

If you happen to have a co-founder with poor hand-eye coordination, he's bound to accidently press "Publish" when he should've pressed "Edit"

The Solution: John will use extreme caution while editing to ensure he doesn't accidentally send out unfinished updates to everyone!

Thank you all for continuing to be our foundation as we finish product development, and begin to grow as a company. There are so many exciting things coming up in Fathom's future, and we can't wait to share them all with you - our Fathom family.

Have a great holiday season!

John, Matt, Danny, and Chris

Please Disregard - Update Coming Soon!
about 8 years ago – Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 08:24:44 PM

Please disregard - update #3 coming soon!