“I spent 20 years in the Navy as a Submariner. Although I wasn’t a Sonar Tech, I spent a lot of time in the Sonar Shack listening. You could hear all sorts of things; whales, crustaceans, pile drivers building north atlantic oil rigs, and of course, the occasional Russian Submarine. Being the Audio Guy I am, I found this fascinating and always wanted my own set of hydrophones to continue the journey. Which leads us to today’s Instructable: Build your own professional grade hydrophones. These may not match the durability of what the Navy and commercial ones do, but they certainly meet or exceed the acoustic properties they do. Best of all, they are inexpensive to build.
We need three critical things for the acoustics:
The right transducer
A high impedance, low noise buffer amplifier
Resin to embed items one and two in
Other items for the build:
Male XLR jack
Microphone cable (that can be submerged)
A mold to put the parts in - I have a couple ways to do this.”