• 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.

• 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

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. 

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