A real submarine.
Built from first principles.
20 years of writing code → one autonomous boat, documented end to end.
T-817 to dive target
Honest engineering is the whole point.
Most engineering content shows you the highlight reel. The successful pour, the clean solder joint, the sensor that worked on the first try. That is not how anything real gets built.
This is a systems-engineering project run in the open: a personal autonomous underwater vehicle, designed and built in a home workshop. Requirements, trade-offs, failed castings, recalibrations — everything stays in the frame, because the failures are where the engineering lives.
Software taught me how to manage complexity. The boat is where that discipline meets pressure, salt water and physics that do not care about your sprint plan.
If you care about how real things get built — stay. You are in the right place.
Start here
How the Boat Works
The plain-language tour of every system, outside-in.
The Roadmap
Where each module stands, and what's next.
ARGUS-6 sonar series
Build the boat's eyes, lesson by lesson.
Latest from the build log
Building an AUV from scratch — the plan
Inside the pressure hull
ARGUS-6: first ping in the test tank
Why the main drive spins both ways
Why this boat spins both propellers
The power budget is the mission
New to submarines?Start here to nail the basics — no engineering background required.
How does a submarine actually dive?
Ballast, buoyancy and trim — the physics of going under, explained without equations.
Why build an autonomous boat at home?
What a personal AUV is, what it is for, and why a home workshop is enough to build one.
Hi, I'm Dennis Hudikov
I started as a radio engineer in 2005, then spent 20 years building software systems. Now I'm building the thing I actually wanted to build all along: a personal autonomous submarine.
Everything on this site comes from a real workshop and a real boat — the requirements, the schematics, the failures and the fixes. No renders pretending to be hardware.
Built with
- ROS 2
- ESP32-S3
- Texas Instruments
- JITX
- Bambu Lab
Don't watch the launch from the outside.
Follow the build as it happens — one honest email at a time.