Can You Live Stream With A PowerRay In Lake Tahoe?

Underwater drones? Live streaming? The emergence of the underwater drone industry is an exciting new chapter in the history of technology. So why not live stream? It's a tool that can be used for multiple underwater scenarios and water makes up a whopping 70% of our earth! So get out there and show the world what lives beneath the surface.

Today we're going to learn 3 things:

1. Can you live stream on the internet with a PowerRay?

2. Does Lake Tahoe have fast enough WiFi?

3. Can we impress the Governor of California with an underwater drone?

Prepping the PowerRay for the live stream dive

CA state park diver Denise Jaffke looks at the PowerRay camera while testing

Earlier this year PowerVision was invited to be a part of history. California State Parks were to open the first-ever underwater museum open to the public in Lake Tahoe. The Emerald Bay Maritime Trail would be launched at an event attended by multiple members of the Californian State Government, including Governor Jerry Brown and most of the mainstream media from around the country.

Together with Zoom and California State Parks, our role was to capture the underwater ceremony and live stream this to the world from the PowerRay. No pressure right? *Gulp*

After a couple of meetings with both teams, we built a checklist for what we would need to successfully live stream from the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

1. Digital AV Converter
2. High-Speed Internet Connection of 2Mbps (up/down)
3. Laptop
4. PowerRay

The Digital AV Converter would connect what we were seeing on our phone to the laptop. The High-Speed internet would give us the proper bandwidth to stream video via Zoom. The PowerRay would follow a team of divers to the sunken barges that were to be the centerpiece of the underwater museum. CA State Parks was to set-up a high-speed microwave router that would broadcast internet across Lake Tahoe all the way to the boat! We worked out the plan and we met for a demo a month out from the big event. Here are some pictures from the successful test day:

Dr. John Ittleson preps the Zoom equipment and team for the live dive

It's now the big day and of course, we were all a bit nervous. The turn out was very impressive. CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, San Francisco Chronicle and of course the star of the show, Governor Jerry Brown. There was no room for error.

We did all our checks and the PowerRay was good to go. We set off on the boat with the media and distinguished guests, the dive team went down and it was show time!

The Media and Zoom team getting ready for the live dive

The Media swarmed the dive team to hear about the experience

The PowerRay successfully live streamed the entire event not only to the launch party on the boat but the entire world via Zoom's Conference Call app. Everybody was extremely happy, including us. We were told that it was the first time ever a Zoom call had been broadcast from underwater too! All in all a very impressive day for the PowerRay and another great achievement for the team here at PowerVision!

So to answer our original 3 questions:

1. Can you live stream on the internet with a PowerRay? Yes!

2. Does Lake Tahoe have fast enough WiFi? Turns out so!

3. Can we impress the Governor of California with an underwater drone? Oh, you bet we can!

Here is a video recap that was broadcast at Zoomtopia, the annual Zoom conference held in Silicon Valley:

James Manson

PowerVision

Content Director

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