New Project, Step 0: Deep water submersible goal of ~2000 ft

I am in research mode for attempting to build an underwater ROV that can send live video to the surface from  the depths of a deep lake such as Lake Tahoe or Wakatipu.

My project will start with the feasibility of pressure proofing video cameras with mineral oil. this may prove difficult due to the fact that the index of refraction of mineral oil is very similar to the index of refraction of lens plastic.

perhaps a compensating lens can be used in a water chamber.

Test #1: submerge a cheap video camera in mineral oil, and attempt to obtain a focused picture.

New Toys! TYT 9800 and TYT 8000E

https://youtu.be/DSZHI5fJt-k
modify the TYT bands!
open TYT program,
open frequency range
press F11
enter password 9800TYT
change stuff around
enjoy!

Idea: HT1250 + HT1250 + wire + Battery = Repeater?

My have baked idea:

Shove two ht's in a box with a battery and a a cobbled together microphone connectors. set the tx to vox, and a little repeater is born....

Images swipped from http://www.batlabs.com/htpro.html

Raspberry Pi Transceiver

here's the recipe I'm going to follow:

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/building-a-ham-tranceiver-with-an-rtl-sdr-raspberry-pi-and-rpitx/

Materials

Pi2
rtlsdr
usb sound card

I might need to get a powered usb hub, we will see.
I will have to build a filter.
I been looking into a chip filter, I wonder if this will work:
http://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data-sheets/ADRF6518.pdf

Robot Project

these are my notes for a MAREA http://www.arrl.org/marea-ham-radio-robotics robot.

I've got
usb GPS
raspberry pi
old windows XP laptop
gel cell batteries
wheels,
radios.
metal scraps
motor controllers
uhf video xmitter
video camera
power amp that may work with transmitter
usb cameras
possibly repairable pan and tilt network camera
hackable linksys routers

Project timeline:
design and build chassis
design and build computer interface
design and program radio interface

What I need:
Time to build.

Links
tvsharp receiver for video transmitter:
http://rtl-sdr.ru/page/tvsharp-analogovoe-tv-na-rtl-tjunere

usb gps on pi
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?&t=32461

Aprs on droid
http://www.qsl.net/ja7ude/SmartPhone/u2aprs/indexe.html

Repeater Project Update

I've made some progress on  my repeater project.
previous post:
http://kk6afg.blogspot.com/2015/06/im-building-portable-repeater.html

I've programmed a couple of XTS3000's Model 1 (no keypad or lcd) to access the repeater.

If a user would like to operate the simplex, they select position A on the three way switch.

If a user would like to operate low power repeater, the select position B

If a user would like to operate high power repeater, the user selects position C and keys up the ptt until the sidetone beep turns off then has 20 seconds of high power transmitting available.

the way I accomplished this was the XTS3000 are programmed up with the three position switch set to pick zones. 

zone one is simplex with individual radio MDC1200 id
zone two is repeater offset with individual radio MDC1200 id
zone three is repeat offset with MDC1200 id 9999

The cdm1250 radio is programmed to output an active high output on pin 12(?) for 20 seconds if the radio receives an MDC1200 id of 9999. This is tied in to a channel steering jumper board I cobbled up on the accessory port of the CDM1550ls. This allows the channel to be field selectable via jumpers. The 4 bit channel select active high inputs on pins 6,8,12,and 14 of the accessory port are set to either ground or RX-pin12(?).

the channel select inputs are interesting. each input pin is set as one bit, so if you have 4 channels you only need two pins. I built my jumper board for 4 pins for future flexibility.

I programmed 4 repeater pairs in all the radios. the CDM1550ls transmitter has the 8 "channels" programmed in each of the 4 repeater pairs are programmed in twice. The first four channels are the frequencies in low power, then in high power.

There are two issues I need to fix.
1) 20 second timeout...I just need to insert a timer relay into the system and all will work well.
2)  if a user attempts to speak on the high power setting without activating it first, the repeater won't transmit. Operator training is the only thing I can think of.

Pinouts Post

Motorola CDM series Accessory pinout:

rib to ht1250 cable: