The [almost] Final Push

Today was another long day. You woke up at 07:00 and met Nick at the hardware store to try and find 3.5" PVC pipe and special spray paint. You soon left the store and headed down to Baxter as the hardware store did not carry any of the materials you were looking for.

At Baxter you and Nick worked on wiring the submersible and creating a read thruster. You left baxter around 12:30 and headed home. You went to your house while Nick went to meet Josef and Liam at the school. While at your house you finished setting up the Raspberry Pi's (and accidentally broke one!...but no worries, you have another) and fixed the 5v power source you made last night. After working until 18:00 creating ribbon cables for the Pi's, you headed to academic awards. After academic awards you and Josef headed to Home Depot in Topsham and picked up spray paint to paint the sub with.

After returning home you fixed the large epoxied motor, worked on the second beagle bone shield. The second shield is below:

After spending more than 14 hours on the project, you decided to call it a day.

A day of many trips

You had a crazy day today. You woke up around 0730 and met Travis at the Hardware store at 0800. You didn't find what you were hoping for and so headed to Baxter.

There you finished cutting out the main thruster cone and also got a bunch of wiring done. You then took a bunch of parts that you need to fit together over the next couple days. From there you went to senior projects (and arrived at 1300 in time to see only one – Emma and Fiona's about co-operatives).

At FHS you met Liam and Josef. Josef went to Travis's and you and Liam headed back to your house. You then ate lunch and worked on the float for a while, getting half of it together in a nice fashion after a few small glitches. You then brought it to Travis's with some other stuff and all worked on a bunch of different things from soldering, to spray painting, to sanding. Around that time you also ate diner.

You then got ready for Academic awards and went to that long ordeal from 1830 to 2000. You then returned to your house to change and get some parts that your Dad had brought home from work. You then brought all the stuff to Travis's and resumed work. Turns out that some metal had to be bent and there is no good vice at Travis's house so you and Liam then went back to your house for half an hour (from 2230 to 2300).

Upon returning to Travis's you got a couple more things done for tomorrow including a couple more layers of spray-paint and a quick CAD model.

Main thruster and epoxy

You woke up around 0745 today and met up with the rest of the crew at school around 0900. You and Liam then headed directly to Baxter while Josef and Travis took care of tuxedos and electronic parts.

At Baxter you and Liam set up the router to cut out the mount for the main thruster. You the finished up some CAD models and wrote a little bit more of your essay. When Travis and Josef arrived you all split up and worked on a variety of things including readying the router, redoing the G-code for a new bit and putting together the last of the through hulls.

Liam then left and you and him edited each others papers. Following that you and Travis finished setting up the router, and after a little problem solving got the code to run. It still isn't quite done but should be soon. While it was cutting the three of you ordered pizza from Portland Pie Company and then Travis picked it up.

While that was happening you also had the 3D printer going to make a servo bracket and the last pot for a ESC controller. After finishing up around 1600 you headed back to Freeport. While Travis swam you ate dinner and counted up the number of man hours we have spend in the last two weeks as well as the total number of bytes that we have used in this project.

At 1900 you headed to Travis's house to work on a couple of things. First you epoxied the final ESC. You then spent a while trying to get the cameras to look nice before you epoxied them into their cases as well. Lastly you helped Travis with a voltage step down that he had been working on for most of the evening. When all was said and done you returned home at 2350 to write this post…

Finishing the Thrusters

Today you woke up at 08:00. You edited your Senior Project write-up and then went to meet the rest of the Limbeck team at FHS. There, you decided to split up. You and Josef would go inside and hand in books/assignments while the other two went directly to Baxter. You and Josef also needed to drop off your tuxedos and pick up a few 5v regulators at H.R. Distributors in Portland. After doing all those things, you arrived at Baxter at 10:30 hoping to finish all of the thrusters.

At Baxter you worked on finishing the second half of the submersible. You attached the other two motors and glued in the through-holes. After doing this you then put in 3d printed garbage blocks to stop any material from getting caught in the thrusters. At around 14:30 you stopped working and had lunch. After that you helped Nick cut our the rear thruster on the CnC router and also spoke with Mr. Amory about some details of the project.

While cutting our the large thruster mount, Nick took this awesome picture:

You thought that was worth sharing. Your returned to Freeport around 16:20 and then went to swimming. After swimming you met everybody back at your house hoping to epoxy another ESC and the cameras, wire up the motors in the sub, and finish the 5v power source for the float. Although both the cameras and controller were epoxied, you were not able to get the power source working. At first you had 2 resistors confused because of different online diagrams. After fixing them the source did not cooperate. After roughly 3 hours of work only half of the power sourced worked...hmmmm. You believe there is a problem with the radio shack perf-board as you had a similar electronics problem with the laser harp. You can't wait to fix it for tomorrow.

Frisbee, Grad Party, and RoboGoby

After a long night you woke up this morning at 08:30 to meet everybody at FHS at 09:15 for frisbee states. You then caravanned to the fields to play your first game at 10:30. At 10:30 you started by playing Windham. You won that game, but by the end were somewhat tired. You then played Yarmouth without any break in-between games (they hand;t had a game at 10:00 as they got a by). We lost that game and then continued to lose the next two games against South Portland and Falmouth A2. After playing frisbee games for more than 6 hours you were beat.

You headed home, took a shower, ate a quick dinner, and then headed to a graduation party in Yarmouth. The graduation part was for two of your friends you have been swimming with for the past 5-10 years. The food at the party was good (they had a portable brick oven!!):

 ...and there were lots of games and people there, although you did not know many of the people as they were all kids from Yarmouth. Anyway, you had a blast and then returned home at 21:30. Once you returned home to wrote your Senior Project Write-up, edited the presentation Nick had moved from our MLTI presentation, and then worked a little more on organizing the code for the project. You also started working on the second Cape for the Submerged BeagleBone, although it is not yet finished.

Frisbee states and busy work

Today you woke up around 0830 and then headed to the high school at 0915 to bring people to the Cumberland Fairgrounds for the frisbee states tournament.

Freeport Ultimate (FU) had a good first game – you won by universe point after hard cap. You then lost to Yarmouth, South Portland, and Falmouth A2. All four of the games were back to back so you played frisbee from about 1030 to 1645.

You got quite beat up from diving and sliding, with both hips having large scrapes as well as your right elbow, and you got a sunburn.

Upon returning home you ate, showered, and napped to regain energy. After recovering you wrote the first draft of your essay, created a rough draft of the presentation, and worked on a couple of Limbeck paraphernalia pieces in Photoshop.

Cameras and Prom (5/31)

You wrote this a day late as you got home fro Prom so late last night.

Before that though you worked at Travis's house from 0900 to 1400 on the project. You mostly worked with Liam and were trying to put together the camera housings and make the cameras fit inside. You cut slits in the boxes that needed it while Liam ground down the corners of the Pi-cameras so that they would fit. It turns out that you also had to cut away some of the box material so that the cameras could fit in the way they are supposed to.

After getting the cameras to fit you two worked on getting the pieces to mount together. You went to the hardware store and bought 6-32 threaded rod and nuts to make you own bolts (they didn't have bolts for some reason). Upon returning you sanded a couple of the pieces and cut the threaded rod so that it fit the pieces together as best as possible. You then tried to mount the nuts inside of a couple of the pieces so that they don't take up very much room. However, a blow dryer and a hot glue gun were not the necessary tools for the job and so we are going to have to wait until our next Baxter trip.

After returning to your house you cleaned your car, washed yourself, and got dressed for prom. You went to Emily Jennings' before and after party and while there you also saw loads of cameras…

You had fun and accompanied Emma to Emelia von Satlza's graduation party for a short time as well. Finally you went to bed around 0100 thinking about the upcoming frisbee states.

if (Code == True && Prom)

Today you woke up at 08:30 and met with the guys to work on the project as much as possible before prom.

You started out the morning by testing PoE for the Ubiquiti dishes. By connecting the middle 2 (blue) and the outer 2-right (black) wires to power and ground respectively, you were able to power to Ubiquiti dishes easily. After doing this you crimped an Ethernet connector and looked at the internals of the small network switch you purchased.

While you were working on the networking piece, Liam and Nick were working on fitting the cameras into their pots (for future epoxying). After cutting slits in the plastic and then cutting parts of the PiCamera PCBs and the C920 PCB, you guys were able to fit the cameras inside their molds. You then started working on the code with Josef while Liam and Nick worked on connecting the different parts of the camera. At 12:00 when you left to pick up your flowers for prom, you had still not figured out the networking issues.

Prom Flowers

After returning home, you worked on the code for around an hour. At 13:10 you headed upstairs for lunch. During lunch you finally figured out a good system for the software. After working for another 30 minutes after lunch you had figured out the software! Now, everything was working. You spent the next hour cleaning up the various different versions of software you had made as well as imaging the BeagleBones' and Raspberry Pis' SD cards.

During this time you Nick left to get ready for prom (around 14:00) while you and Liam continued working and watched Josef play Dalton Chapman's Skyrim Mod (which he created for his Senior Project). At 3:20 you finished with the project and left to get ready for prom...

.5 of the Through-holes done

Today you woke up at 08:00 and got ready for the day. You started a blog post about the spool and power transfer system. You waited for Nick and Liam to show up before heading down to Baxter. 

On the way down to Baxter you stopped at H.R. Distributors to buy a LM317 variable voltage regulator. This regulator was supposed to regulate any voltage entering the circuit to a specific output which is controlled by using different resistor values. After leaving the electronics store you headed to a local hardware store to pick up 6-32 hex bolts for the camera pots. Unfortunately, they did not carry the bolts you guys needed. 

You then met Josef at Baxter. At Baxter you worked on connecting the ESC controllers to the motors. You used liquid electrical tape and heat shrink to connect the motors. You had to fix the setup twice, but by the end of the day you had finished one section (two through holes). An image of the motor + controller setup is pictured below. While you were doing this Nick and Liam worked with Mr. Amory on the rear thruster design and Josef worked on finishing the OCU code. 

After returning home at 14:50 you worked on creating the power system for the BeagleBone before you headed to Jess's softball game. You found out that the LM317  regulates the voltage linearly in relation to the supply voltage (although it's not supposed to!). You decided to use a combo of the LM317 and UA7805 to created a regulated 5v supply for the BeagleBone. 

After going to Jess's game between 16:00 and 17:20, you headed with your swim coach to a meeting in Northport. After a 2.5 hour meeting from 19:00 to 21:30, you headed home. In the car you wrote this blogpost. It was a long day, but you got a lot done. You can't wait to finish potting the computers and cameras with epoxy this weekend and especially can't wait to finish the thrusters on Monday! Hopefully you guys will have something in the water next week. 

Collaborative CAD

You woke up late today (0845) as you forgot to set an alarm. You then quickly rushed over to Travis's house to carpool down to Baxter. On the way you bough a couple resistors and a voltage step-down so that you could run the BeagleBone off the batteries. You also stopped at a hardware store to buy 6-32 bolts, but they didn't have any.

At Baxter you and Liam went and helped Mr. Amory figure out how to cut out the main thruster container. This took a couple hours, from about 0945 to 1200, as the MasterCam software for SolidWorks was acting up a little bit.

After that you went to lunch with Mr. Amory, Josef, Liam, and Travis at Portland Pie Company. Upon returning you quickly finished the main thruster CAD model.

You then went down stairs and helped Travis to glue the small thrusters together in to the main body of the submersible. The four of you then went back to Freeport and went to frisbee (except for Travis). Frisbee went better than yesterday but was still a bit more relaxed than you would have liked.

You then went to the dinner that Ethan W. and Naomi were putting on for their senior project. The food was quite good and it was a nine course meal.

Thrusters and the Spool

Today you woke up at 07:00 in order to meet at the HS with the Senior Project advisory group. You showed up at 07:50 for a 08:00 meeting. The meeting did not occur on time (it was only supposed to take 10 minutes) and you were upset at that.

After leaving the school you and Nick headed down to Baxter to finish up the through holes on the sub. Shortly after getting to the school you ordered some parts on Amazon and worked on the code to spool the tethers.

At around 10:00 you met with Mr. Amory and then started working on the through hole thrusters. You hot-glued the through-holes together, and attached the  props to the motors, and waterproofed the motor connections.

You worked on the thrusters until 14:20, and then headed to frisbee. Before frisbee, you stopped to get multiple hairs cut. After the hair cutting, you went to the HS and played a long game of pick-up firs bee in the field hockey field. After frisbee, you went to swimming.

After swimming, you met Nick and Josef at Nick's house. While there, you finished wrapping the other 130 feet of tether (adding the foam and nice casing). The tether is now done. You also worked for multiple hours on getting the power transfer complete. Below is an image of the brushes we made to easily transfer the power from the batteries to the tether:

Finishing Up the Server (5/28)

Today was another day of Python.

You woke up at 08:00 and worked a little bit on sprucing up the code. You then went into town to first get flowers for Prom, and then talk to Mrs. Barter and Mrs. Donovan at the HS. After talking with both people, you returned home and met with Josef while Nick and Liam were at Baxter.

You spent a few hours working to perfect the Python code, and ultimately settled on using a one-server system (instead of a two server) that read the IPs of connected devices and allocated either listening or sending based on that IP.

After [mostly] finishing the servers, you went to Frisbee practice as your game against Forest City (Portland) had been canceled. You also received the schedule for states. Freeport is seeded 5th out of 12 teams! You also had to scramble last minute to get a chaperone for the team as there is no coach, but we need a legal adult (over 21) to act as a chaperone at states.

After frisbee, you went to swimming and then came home. You worked a little on the python code, and then went out to dinner with Jessica.

A collection of parts

Today you woke up around 0700 to get to school at 0800 for a practice presentation. You only went because it was required and it didn't go too smoothly because the dongle doesn't work for computers and we didn't have an actual presentation made up yet.

You then headed down to Baxter with Travis (arriving around  0915) and started work on printing the shelves for the embedded Linux computers. After getting the 3D printer started you went down stairs and glued in one end off all the thruster tubes.

You then worked on water proofing the leads to the motors as they aren't very well made at the joint where water might get in. After doing that you both headed to Portland Pie for lunch, which lasted from about 1150 to 1215.

You then went back to work on the motors some more, while Travis went to get a tux and some resistors. While he was out you tapped four metal rods that will serve as the propellor shaft and when Travis got back you press fit the onto the motors.

After that you headed to frisbee, which was at the field hockey field today because there weren't enough rides for everyone. It wasn't a great practice as nobody took it that seriously, and you hurt yourself making a diving catch.

After frisbee you headed back to your house and showered, then Josef and Travis came over around 1800. You three put together the rest of the tether while took more than an hour and a half. Then you and Travis worked on the power transfer system on the float while Josef fixed some coding issues that he had in the main Java program.

You finally finished a rough draft of the power transfer system at 2330.

Baxter and cancelled frisbee

You went to Baxter again today. Liam came over and you carpooled down to Baxter around 0930. When you arrived you got the 3D printer going to create the boxes that your embedded linux devices will be held in.

After that you worked in CAD a bit more and got the shelving done for the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black. You then headed downstairs to work with the CNC router. You tried to cut out the motor slots in the thruster however the g-code was messed up. Thus you have to make more thruster modules to replace the two that were made incorrectly.

You then went back up to the computer lab and worked some more on heat-sinks. After eating lunch Mr. Amory showed up and together you three came up with the best option for the heat sinks: a metal rod that holds the LED and lens in it. Mr. Amory then modified the g-code and gave it to you to use on the CNC router.

You cut out the four thruster pieces and they are now almost ready for assembly. You then headed to Portland Pi for lunch. Upon returning you did some work in the computer lab on making a brace for the servo motor that will be doing camera tilt.

You then headed back to Freeport for frisbee practice around 1400 as the game was cancelled due to bad field conditions. At practice you made-up and taught everyone a new play called "Loom."

You then went home around 1645 and worked on the brace for the servo motor, coming up with a good if not final solution. You also talked to your dad about the connectors that you plan to use on the sub and he thinks it needs to be rethought.

Finally you started the matriculation process for Princeton by setting up and e-mail and similar things.

Python and Unhappiness :(

This morning you woke up and started to work on organizing the code for the project. You first organized the sensor code, finding the best possible way to send the sensor data. You organized the strings into an easily readable format. After working on the code for a few hours, you went into town to find out about renting space at the middle school. Unfortunately, it was very expensive...On the way back home you stopped at the bank and checked the company balance (which was higher than you had anticipated).

After returning home, you continued to work on the code. You stopped for a quick lunch break at around 11:00. Josef then came over. You worked with him on finally getting to server/client python/java pair working and controlling a motor! After putting the right delay in the code (.75 seconds) the motors seemed to react almost flawlessly!

After finishing with the motors you headed to swimming at 16:00. After swimming you ate a TON because you were very hungry from not eating much during the day.

After swimming you worked more on fixing the code. You were trying to send data earlier in the day, but it had not worked. This was due to many different problems...after 3 jour hours of problem solving you finally fixed most of it. That was NO fun at all. Below is a funny picture you used to cheer yourself up.

Baxter for 3D printing

You had a pretty good day today. You woke up around 0800 again and then headed over to Travis's. While there you made sure that the whole Hobbyking order was ready to go down to Baxter (meaning you tested motor controllers).

You then went to Baxter with Liam and worked on the camera structure. You ended up having to make it much more rigorous and held together in more places (as you broke it into more pieces). You spent almost two hours reworking the design and getting it ready to 3D print.

You then had to export all the SolidWorks files as .stl files so that the printer could use them. After getting the parts all ready you had Mr. Amory start the 3D printer. It seemed to be working well so you went and looked at the through holes. Turns our you need to modify the G-code a little so that they print better.

After that you went back to the computer lab and started work on heat-sinks. You then headed back to Freeport for frisbee, which was unfortunately cancelled due to the weather. So, instead, you went back to Travis's and worked on a couple miscellaneous things.

Then you returned to your house and worked on the heat-sinks even more. You then ate a quick dinner and headed to the Performing Arts awards (as you were part of the musical this year). After returning home you fine tuned the heat-sinks and once again arrived at a possible solution.

Miscellaneous

You woke up at 0800 again today. You then had pancakes made by your father and then you accompanied him to work so that you could grab his ethernet crimpers. You then headed to Travis's around 0930 and created four ethernet cables using the crimpers (it was much easier than using a hammer/screwdriver like the first attempt).

After that you went in town to find accessories for your prom tux and were quite unsuccessful. You then headed back to Travis's and wrote up the beginnings of two blog posts.

After that you tried to look into the problem of getting a dimmer for our LEDs working. It was unsuccessful at the time but Travis figured out the problem tonight. You then ate lunch and played darts for a break.

You helped Josef and Travis with code for the motors using the X-Box controller for about an hour. Then Liam and Josef left (around 1700) and you and Travis decided to work on the float. You two went to L.L.Bean where you bought a waterproof box for the electronics on the float (it took two tries as the rejected your check?).

The two of you then went back to your house and worked on putting the electronics neatly in the box and making a shelf for it to rest on. After that you made a rest for the battery and decided how you would attach the dish.

Finally you bough the accessories for your tux online and started a job search for the summer.

Comin' Together

To you, today seemed to have been more productive than the weekend was. You woke up around 08:45, took a shower, and tried to get the N-Channel MOSFET (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) working. You wired it up and attached it to the Pi, but, while using servo-blaster, the voltage coming from the MOSFET (which should have been varying from 0v to 12v) only varied from 11v to 12v. After you tried different duty cycles and pulse widths on servo-blaster, you decided to go downstairs and crimp the ethernet cables with Nick (who had arrived around 09:45). Using ethernet wire crimpers, you and Nick made all of the ethernet cables for the project and found out that  we need a switch to handle the ethernet traffic of the multiple devices on the network. 

After hooking up the ethernet cables, Nick headed into town and you ate lunch. After lunch you did some research on MOSFETs and were continually puzzled why your setup had not worked. You started to again work on the python code for the project. Liam arrived and wrote up a 3-page documentation of the project so far. Josef then arrived and began working on the code. 

You, Josef, and Nick then decided on how to use the Xbox controller to drive the submersible. You and Josef then decided on the format in which to send the strings used to communicate with the Pi's. After deciding this, you wrote software that would act as a "middle-man" for the motor data. Basically, the BeagleBone on the float is going to handle all of the interacting with the OCU. It will receive the motor data and then act as a client and connect with the Raspberry Pi on the sub. After getting the "middle-man" software done you worked on the Pi's software. Although this wasn't very difficult, you ran into a few problems. Namely, when the code was not working instead of spitting our errors it just sat there...arg. You had to comb through the code looking for your errors. Finally, around 17:00 you had the motor-code working. 

Around that time Josef and Liam had to go to a family party (they were actually late as the party started at 17:00 and they left my house at 17:15....). You and Nick then decided to finish the float. You went to LL Bean and bought a waterproof contained to fit all of the electronics. You then went to Nick's and added mounts for the battery, electronics, and communication disk. You worked on cutting wire for the electronics and trying to fit everything inside of the waterproofed container. 

After having a very good Egg Roll dinner at Nick's, you headed home. At home you had ice cream, test the Ubiquiti power sources on DC power (which did not work), and then returned to the MOSFET. This time you tried the Arduino (which worked) and then decided to use the GPIO.RPi library to run PWM on the Pi rather than servo blaster. It worked like a charm. Below is a video of the LED pulsing: 

Everything seems to finally be coming together. 

Electronic boxes and shelves

Today you were able to get a lot done, and as it was more productive you were more optimistic about the project…

You went to Travis's at 0900 again and worked on the CAD models that you have been making the last couple days. After finishing all the parts for the heat sinks you worked on creating shelves and boxes for the embedded Linux controllers. 

You then ate lunch (leftover pizza) and played a little frisbee to get some fresh air and a break from the computer from about 1245 to 1330. You then finished the shelving and the boxes to epoxy the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone in. You then made all the pieces so that they could either be 3D printed or cut out on the 3-axis router.

You then cut out part of the float to make sure you could easily fit the batteries into it. After that you programmed motor controllers to send down to Baxter so they can finish the thrusters. Then you headed home around 1845. 

Finally you tried on the tux that you Grandfather gave you and were happy to find that it fit really well.

Weekend 3: ECE

Today you again woke up at 8:25 (predictable...right?) and took a shower. You started work on the Cape for the BeagleBone on the float. At around 9:10 you went down to have breakfast. Liam and Nick were at your house, but your dad had not finished making the pancakes he had wanted to make. You, Liam, and Nick then waited and talked a little, but mostly ate pancakes. At 9:50 Liam and Nick headed downstairs while you headed upstairs to finish the Cape.

Although you went downstairs a few times, you spent almost four hours planning and putting together the cape (you don't know why this took so long...). Below is the finished product with all of the sensors attached:

After finishing the Cape you continued to work on the BeagleBone software. You now have running code which will read the sensor data from ALL of the sensors and output it in a byte stream to a client. It was exciting to finally get some pieces put together. 

Tomorrow you are going to work on the Pi software...basically creating servers to read incoming Xbox data and interpret it -- whether it's the PWM for thrusters, servo, or LEDs.

Weekend 3: Another Day

Today you woke up at 08:25 without an alarm...you were ready to work on the project! Everybody met at your house at 09:00 (although Josef showed up around 11:00) for another long day. You spend the first half of the morning trying to get the tilt-compensated compass working via I2C on the BeagleBone. After much failing, it continued no to work. You decided to started working on finishing the python code.

You consolidated many of the different sensor reading programs into a single python module. You then tweaked the old RoboGoby Servers in order to allow data to be sent and received continuously.

You also ordered pieces for the project, which you had picked out the evening before. You also finished writing a blog post on the DS18B20 temperature sensor on the BeagleBone Black.

At around 18:45 Liam, Josef, and Nick headed over to Liam's house for dinner. You headed to what you thought was a swim team BBQ, although you were given the wrong date...the BBQ will actually be tomorrow.

You then headed back to Liam's house to eat and then to yours. You wrote some emails (for frisbee and the summer camp your running) and then Nick and you talked about different options for the spinning disk on the float. You also planned out tomorrow which will include going to Home Depot, finishing up the electronics on the float, and hopefully finishing up some CAD modeling.

After Nick left you started working on the BeagleBone Cape:

Camera boxes and heat sinks

You went to Travis's right off at 0900 to work on the project all day, along with the rest of the group. When you first arrived you continued to work on making boxes for the cameras to be epoxied into. It took about nine iterations to find a good solution.

You then took the finished part and broke it into pieces so that it could be 3D-printed. It is three pieces right now, providing that the proposed solution passes Mr. Amory's check for feasibility.

You then took a break and helped with the compass that Travis was working on for a little bit, and then the group went up stairs to eat lunch. After lunch you took a short break from work and played frisbee from about 1245 to 1330.

When you returned to work you started making what will (hopefully) be the final versions of the heat sinks for the lights. As usual after beginning the CAD model it looks like it might not work as well as planned…you began quite frustrated as you felt that the only thing you have done in a long time is design useless CAD models.

Then your computer auto-updated and you had to redo some of the work which made it worse. You then were kind enough to share this frustration with the group by talking about all the reasons that the submersible will not be completed on time.

Finally around 1845 you headed to Liam's for dinner. Then you went back to your house to get crimpers for ether net cables, but you forgot to ask your dad to bring them home from work so you couldn't use them.

Lastly you brought the other extender over to Travis's to fit the servo to it. You decided that was probably a luxury at this point and you will probably make it stationary for now. Overall it was a frustrating day for you but it seems that it was also fairly productive.

MLTI Conference 5/22

The biggest part of this project for you today was the MLTI conference. You woke up at 5:30 to carpool up to the UMaine Campus in Orono. Once you were there you spent some time milling around and going to some of the smaller presentations. After a pitiful lunch you prepared for the presentation. As a "Keynote Speaker" you presented for the whole group of attendees. The presentation went off more or less without a hitch, and people seemed really interested in the project. For you the best part of that day was afterward when a little girl, probably in 6th grade, came up to the group at the T-Shirt booth and told you all that you all really inspired her, that was really heartwarming for you. After that you headed to Nick's to add floatation material and a casing to the tether. The tether is now looking incredibly professional.

There and back again. 5/23

Sadly you couldn't spend the morning with the rest of the group. You had marching practice for the memorial parade. That got out around 11:30, from there you headed home to grab some food for yourself and the whole group. From there you drove down to baxter to meet up with Travis and Nick for the last bit of cutting the through hulls. After that was finished you had to attend a frisbee game. The game was a disappointing as the South Portland had been over hyped. From there you headed to Nick's house to finish up work on the float, trying to complete the power transfer system. Our planned system would skip a lot and lead to shorting the electronics frequently. Once the problem was identified and a new system was devised you headed over to Travis' house for a quick dinner and discussion of your next steps before heading home around 8:30.

Back to Baxter

You woke up at 0800 today so that you could meet Travis at the hardware store at 0900 this morning. You bought screws for the power transfer system and then headed back to your house. From there you carpooled  down to Baxter Academy for the second time this week.

Your arrived around 1030 and spent the rest of the day getting the PVC cut out for the through holes. The only short break we took from working was eating lunch across the street at Portland Pie Company. You had a few issues that you had to work out, and even almost broke the CNC machine. In the end it was worth it though as the holes were very smooth and fit the through holes almost perfectly.

You then went to frisbee where Freeport won against South Portland in a fairly easy game. You stayed after the game ended to watch B-team play Merriconeag.

You then headed back to your house with Liam around 1700 and worked on the power transfer system. The original plan we had fell through (as usual) and we are now going to order parts from McMaster to put together the final version sometime next week.

Finally you went to Travis's around 2000 with Liam (Josef was already there) and you had pizza for dinner. Then you started to work on the boxes that will hold the epoxied cameras. You have gone through 3 iterations of CAD models now, and expect to have a couple more tomorrow before getting the best option.

Baxter Again

Today you woke up early to help Jessica with her physics. After meeting with her in the morning, you headed to the hardware store to meet Nick. At the hardware store you bought screws for the power transfer system on the float (which you worked on last night).

At 09:00 you and Nick headed down to Baxter Academy to cut out the through holes for the thrusters. You dropped Nick off and went to rent a tux for prom...unfortunately they were closed. You headed back to Baxter and continued helping Nick make the jig for the PVC. At around 12:00 you and Nick stopped for lunch. You then headed out again and actually rented a tux this time. Soon after you got back, Liam showed up. After an hour and half more of work, all of the PVC had the correct through hole cuts needed for our final prototype!

At 14:30 you left Baxter with Quinton, Ben, and Bryce in tow. You were heading to the second-to-last frisbee game of the entire year. You played South Portland, and although they were supposed to be good, they were not. Your team beat them easily.

After frisbee you first headed home and then headed to swimming. After swimming you met the team at your house and continued working on the software. You charged the large LiFePO4 batteries (pictured below) and finished the threaded python server. You then created a few different final orders for the project (which included: LEDs, an LCD screen, jumper cables).

You also dedicated tomorrow to an entire day of project work...we're hoping to get more sensors interfaces, final orders placed, and CAD designs completed.

MLTI and FINE Lookin' Tether

You got ready this morning around 4, as you had not been able to sleep due to your upset stomach. You arrived at the HS around 06:10 and left soon after, driving Nick, Liam, and Josef to UMaine to attend the 17th Annual MLTI Student Conference. You, along with your friends, were keynote speakers at the conference.

The conference started with an engaging discussing about innovation in Maine. After the keynote speaker you went to two different learning blocks. The first block you went to you learned how easy it was to program Mac Apps using Xcode (found in the App store). After the Mac block, you head over to the Hackathon. This block was awesome. There were tons of students working on different programming and electronic activities. Your group was even approach by the leader of the session who inquired about the project, and if your group would be able to be an approachable groups during the Hackathon. You, Nick, Josef, and Liam agreed that you could do this. 

At around 11:50 you headed to the UMaine bookstore so Liam could buy a sweatshirt. Then you headed back to the Collins Center for the Arts to eat lunch and be debriefed on the technicalities of your keynote presentation. After eating, setting up the presentation, and wiring up the mics, you were all set. You then waited around for 30 minutes. At around 13:30 you presented. You had a good presentation, although you wished you had not stubbled over your words as much as you had (at least there is room for improvement). After the presentation you listed to a brilliant 8th grade coder and a recent Lewiston HS graduate who urged Mainers to stay in Maine. 

After driving back from the conference in record time, you, Nick, and Liam headed over to Nick's to put the tether together(this tether looks REALLY professional). You had just received the foam you had been waiting on. Below is a picture of the 2 wires we are using for power and communication, as well as the foam cord for flotation and the polyester tubing:

After preparing 100 feet of the tether (because that's all the foam/tubing you had) you worked on creating the power transfer system on the float. Using aluminum and brushes from a DC motor you, Nick, and Liam worked on creating a system to transfer power to the tether. You ended up settling on using large "washers" on each end of the spool which are connected using the brushes from a DC motor to the batteries. This took a while and you plan on finishing it tomorrow. 

MLTI and float work

Today you woke up at 0530 and met the rest of the team at school at 0610. You then left for UMO and the MLTI conference. You heard the opening keynote speaker talk about innovation in Maine and why the MLTI program is really useful.

You then went to sessions on coding for Mac iOS and OS X. And during the second session went to a "hacker club" meeting. At the second session you got to talk a little bit about your project and see some other cool projects.

You then ate a rather lackluster lunch before getting ready to present at 1325. The four of you then presented in front of about 800 people, which was much less intimidating than expected. The presentation seemed well received and was followed by two other cool presentations. One about a coding class taught by an eighth grader and the other about making movies (the soundtrack and video editing) using MLTI technology.

Upon returning to Freeport around 1700 you headed back to your house with Liam and Travis in tow. You then untwisted the tether so that you could add the foam and put it in a casing. It looks very nice as a finished product, however, we only purchased enough for half and so need to buy the rest on McMaster now that we know it works.

The three of us then ate ribs for dinner (courtesy of your dad) and then went to work on the power transfer system. You are using brushed from an old starter motor and aluminum sheeting to transfer the power from the batteries to the spinning spool and tether.

WHAP and a good game (5/21)

You woke up at a reasonable time (0845) and then headed to Travis's to work on the presentation for tomorrow as well as a few other things. In the end both Liam and Josef didn't come due to necessary chores…this left you and Travis to finish the presentation and work on odds and ends. You also watched Mr Amory's TED talk that he gave earlier this year in Bangor.

You then went to the library to take the WHAP test. You found it to be easier than expected and finished the test a little early. After the test Jennifer Libsack dropped off the Schmidts and Quinton so we could bring them to the frisbee game. She was also nice enough to get you a subway sandwich.

The game went pretty well, you won 15-13 in come from behind fashion. Unfortunately you either got dehydrated or got food poisoning and felt like you were going to pass out after the game.

You headed back to Travis's for a short time to practice the presentation for tomorrow and then headed home. You were looking forward to food until you started eating at which point you felt nauseous and went to bed (hence the late blog post).

WHAP, Frisbee, and Bad Food... (5/21)

You woke up in the morning at 08:00 for a scheduled meeting with the team at your house to practice the MLTI presentation. Unfortunately, only Nick was able to make it.

In the morning you spend some time connecting the Razor IMU to the BeagleBone and reading data from it. After doing that, you and Nick re-read over the presentation and delegated slides.

At around 11:40 you and Nick headed over the the Community Library to take the AP World History (affectionately called WHAP) exam. You started around 12:15 and spend the next 3 hours writing essays and answering multiple choice questions dealing with "big picture" questions. After the exam you waited for your brother (and his friends) to be dropped off at the library. Once they were dropped off you were going to head to the Frisbee game.

Your mom dropped off the boys and the sandwiches. You then carpooled with Nick, Ben, Bryce, and Quinton to your frisbee game against Scarborough.

The game went well. Although you had a few dropped passes, you played well and made up for it in other plays.

Upon returning home, you, Nick, and Liam finalized the MLTI presentation and then parted. You were very excited for an Indian dinner with Jessica, but unfortunately you got sick. It seems that the Subway had been bad....you ended up spending all night sick and fortunately felt well enough in the morning to go the the MLTI conference.

PVC and heat sinks (5/20)

Today you woke up fairly early and headed down to Baxter with the whole group. When you arrived you were asked/forced to give an impromptu presentation about Project RoboGoby to Mr. Amory's class. After the class was over you headed to the computer lab with Mr. Amory and worked out how to fit the LEDs and their heat sinks into the dome, turns out the best solution is placing the lenses into the actual dome.

You then created a quick CAD model of a jig to cut out PVC, created the MasterCam code and cut out plywood using the CNC router. It was amazing how quickly the router cut out the part, and I realized that the hardest part of machining things is setting up the code and getting the piece to be perfectly in line before cutting.

After that you headed to Portland Pie for pizza, and then worked a short time more at Baxter. You then headed to frisbee with everyone but Josef (as well as Ben and Bryce Schmidt and Quinton). At frisbee you again worked on the new stacks that you came up with.

You then went home and cleaned up for the NHS induction ceremony – as a NHS officer you got to swear in next years NHS students. After that you went to Travis's house and completed the jigs for the PVC.

(Unfortunately this post is two days late as you forgot the night of and felt sick last night)

Baxter

Today you woke up at 07:30 and got ready to head down to Baxter Academy in Portland. At Baxter you planned on meeting with Mr. Amory (your field advisor) to talk about creating the heatsink and creating the jig for the PVC piping. At around 8:45 you left with in one car, and the others left in another. In Portland you stopped briefly at the Post Office with your brother to submit an application for a passport. After doing that, you headed to Baxter.

When you arrived at the school you gave a quick presentation on Project RoboGoby and then went to work with Mr. Amory in the computer lab. While in the computer lab you figured out a few things. First you, Nick, and Mr. Amory decided to push the LEDs to the front on the dome (and therefore have to black "walling" to bock the light from reflecting inside of the dome). You also thought of an easy way to create a heatsink+light combination that was easy to replace. Basically, the LED will be attached to a copper rectangle which will then be attached to a larger heatsink. The heatsink+light unit will then be bolted onto the lens which sits embedded in the plastic dome of the submersible.

While at Baxter you spent a while looking at different waterproof connectors trying to find the best connector for power transfer to the sub. After looking for a while you settled on using a connector from Bucaneer (you found a great deal on EBay).

After choosing the connector to helped Liam and Nick finish up working with the PVC. You then went to lunch at Portland Pie. After lunch, you worked a little more and then left Baxter with Quinton, Ben, Bryce, Liam, and Nick to head to frisbee.

At frisbee you taught Ben and Bryce the Dice, YKK, and Ho-Stack plays. After that you practiced zone defense more by scrimmaging the entire practice. After frisbee you headed over to swimming...although you delayed your arrival by talking about the project and only had to swim for 45 minutes.

After swimming you headed home. At home you got the SSC150 depth sensor working on the BeagleBone Black. After that you purchased another BeagleBone (this one for the sub). Nick then came over after the NHS induction ceremony. You drilled some holes in the jig (pictured below) and decided to email Mr. Amory to ask about machining the PVC.

After Nick left you spent a little over and hour editing the MLTI presentation.

Blog Posts and Python

Today you wok up at 7:30 and headed to the High School. You sat in the library, writing up a few different blog posts on a number of different things. You wrote about MPlayer and Netcat, the DS18B20 on the BeagleBone, and camera streaming methods. Around 10:00 (and a lot of blog posts later), you headed to the FPAC lobby to be interview by Emily Morang for her senior project. The interview went well. After the interview you talked with Mrs. Donovan about Project RoboGoby and then talked with Seth briefly about the MLTI conference. Mrs. Donovan also shows you this AWESOME video of a Michael Jackson hologram at the Billboard Music Awards (with commentary...):

After finishing up at the High School you, Josef, and Nick headed to your house at around 11:45. At your house you finalized the Python/Java server combination (which was awesome!) and then you fixed the Battery.py file. You also worked on integrating the new server into the code you had already written. After spending a few hours working (and a little bit of time eating), you, Josef, Liam, and Nick headed to frisbee practice.

Frisbee practice was at a perfect time. There was no rain and little wind. After frisbee practice you headed to swimming. Swimming was tiring and you were extremely hungry the entire time...and couldn't stop thinking about Indian food. After swimming you dropped Nick's bike off at his house and headed home. You spend the next couple of hours eating dinner, studying WHAP, throwing darts, emailing people, and reading up on Python module packaging.

All in all it was a good, productive day.

You're very excited to finally cut our the heat-sinks/PVC at Baxter tomorrow!

Slidshow prep

You woke up around 0800 today and studied some WHAP. Then headed to school at 1030 to meet up with the group and talk to Ms. Donovan. You also talked with Seth about the MLTI conference.

You then headed back to Travis's where you created a slideshow for thursday's MLTI conference. This meant looking back on the year and pulling out the important parts and lessons. You collected and chose pictures for the slideshow so that it had more media than just writing.

You tried making a custom theme with either the Limbeck Logo or Project RoboGoby but found it to be too obtrusive to be at all useful.

You then went to frisbee where you worked on stacks and got pretty good results. Finally you studies WHAP again in the evening, added to the presentation, and played some DND to relax/blow off steam. You also made plans to go down to Baxter tomorrow.

Dish mount and more LED work

You had another pretty successful day today. You woke up around 0730 and then went to Bob Moore's house to do yard work (he had purchased your silent auction item of yard work). You were accompanied by Sydney Ambrose, Liam Wade, and Travis Libsack.

After working until 1045 you headed back to your house. You cleaned your room, studied a little bit of WHAP and waited until the next meeting for the project at 1400. When that time rolled around Liam showed up and you guys built another part of the float.

You created a mount for the communication dish that will be stationed on the float. The challenge was to make it so that the dish could rotate (allowing it to always face the other dish), but not crush the servo that is supposed to drive it. You finished around 1730 and Liam headed out.

Then after dinner you headed to Travis's to make mock-ups of the dome with LEDs and cameras. This was helpful to an extent, and you guys think you have finally found the best solution for the LEDs. The solution calls for the LED heat sink to take the place of the dome where it is located so that there is no glare and no black plexiglass needed.

Weekend 2: Only the Beginning

You woke up today and headed over to Bob Moore's house to work in his yard. He previously had won you (and some of your friends) at a school auction. After pulling out barbells for a few hours, you got a ride to Nick's house and drove the truck back home. At home you worked on your own yard for a few hours and then had some lunch. After lunch, you took a shower and then started work on the project.

You first fixed the Socket Servers which took about two hours. After completely re-writing the servers, you think that they're all set. You take a break from intensive python and get the DS18B20 temperature sensor woking on the BeagleBone. You also try out the battery monitor. The values from the ADC read seem to be jumping all over the place...you think that it's either a bad connection to the battery or the BeagleBone is just bad at reading analog values.

Temp Sensor and BeagleBone

You finish with the servers and temperature sensors/battery around 17:00. You then start writing a few different blog posts (C920 Camera, temp sensor, battery, etc.). At around 18:25 you head outside to cook the steak you're having for dinner. At around 19:30 Nick comes over and you spec out the different camera designs. After finding the field of vision of the camera and physically setting up a camera scenario, you know the design needs to be changed.

Nick worked on perfecting the CAD design while you added to the sensor-reading python code and purchased the final materials (hopefully) needed to finish up the project. At around 22:30 Nick left, and you finished up work for the day.

You also have realized that this weekend is just the beginning of a very, very long week.

Weekend 2: Python and Darts

Today was a full day of work for you...over 14 hours of project work! You woke up and headed to Nick's house at 9:10 to work on the tether. Unfortunately the density of the wire used in our tether was too much. Even with the meshed casing and foam tubing, the buoyancy of the tether was still not great enough to allow it to float. There was still about 5 extra pounds of weight that couldn't be accounted for. The only fortunate part about this morning was that the tether casing worked extremely well!

After finishing with the tether your headed to your house at around 11:00 and began working on finishing the battery monitor while Nick created some CAD models. You wrote a post about the battery monitors, started one about MJPG-Streamer on the BeagleBone, and organized all of the python code into a few modules. When Josef and Liam arrived at around 12:30 you continued working on the Python code. You organized the GPS, battery monitoring system, and stepper modules into a easily executable file.

At 14:20 you stopped for a quick snack and then continued working. At 16:30 you went outside and tossed a frisbee and then went back inside for a game of darts. While playing darts Liam telescoped two darts which I though was awesome....

After working on the servers some more, you and Josef finally got a byte connection working (from Python on the BeagleBone to Java on Josef's laptop). After getting this working, you headed over to Liam's house for dinner. At Liam's you had chicken noodle soup, bread, salad, and bagels with nutella (that wasn't actually real nutella). After eating dinner you headed back to your house.

For the next couple of hours you tried to get threads running the Python server, but to no avail. You settled on using a logic loop to receive and then send data. At around 23:00 you, Nick, Liam, and Josef ate pie adjourned. It was a long day and not as productive as you had hoped, although you did get some blog posts written, the streaming method solidified, and different python modules completed.

CAD...CAD...and more CAD

Today, Travis came over to your house and you worked on figuring out the density of the tether. This involved figuring out the volume and weight of the wire, foam cord, and spool covering. It looks like the tether is going to weigh more than the water it displaces and so will not float or be neutrally buoyant, instead it will sink some. This is okay as it is what happens to most lines/cords that go into the water - whether for anchors or fishing.

After that you went to Travis's house and worked on CAD models of the front of the submersible. You have been trying to figure out how best to fit the LEDs, cameras, and heat sinks into the dome and still be able to have tilt cameras and stereoscopic vision.

Today you were thrown another wrench in the fact that you are now going to have three cameras. The webcam for steaming high quality video and two raspberry pi cameras for the stereoscopic visions. This makes for a very crowded dome and is a jigsaw puzzle to try and fit everything. You probably tried about five more ways to fit everything without a great solution, on top of the other five to ten that I have already tried. Your CAD folder for lights has more than twenty files in it now, as an idea of how many models you have had to make.

You then played darts and Frisbee as a break, and then started working on blog posts for both this and the actual blog. Shortly after you left for Liam's where you all had a dinner of salad, smoothie, and chicken soup. You then headed back to Travis's and finished up the blog posts.

Baxter and camera disassembly (5/16)

You, Nick, started the day by unpacking from Model UN. Then Travis came to your house and you worked a little with the float. Then the two of you headed down to Baxter to talk with Mr. Amory and deliver a McMaster order he needed for their part of our project.

When you arrived they were setting up the CNC router to cut out motor bracing for the motor thrusters. You showed Amory our heat sink ideas and he was not a huge fan, telling us that getting to fit inside the dome would be much better.

You guys also looked into buying 10" PVC for the float because the batteries you bought won't fit in the 8" you currently have. You found the best deals on eBay, but were not able to find a good price on end caps so you decided to wait.

You then returned home to get ready for Frisbee, but first you went to the dump and met with NHS officers to plan the NHS induction ceremony. At Frisbee the team master the play called "dice" and learned a new play called "YKK." 

After Frisbee you headed to Travis's house and worked some with the camera's. It turned out that the new webcam is much bigger than expected. Even after taking of the casing so that only the circuit board is still attached to the cord the camera is 3.25" long and so barely fits in the sub. 

Baxter, More Change, Sports, and RoboGoby

Today you woke up and biked to Shaw's to pick up the car (which you brother had driven to the bus stop in the morning with). After you picked up the car you drove to Nick's at around 09:45 to pick him up. At Nick's you sorted the materials from the McMaster order and created a box to bring down to Baxter Academy. After sorting the materials you quickly checked if the timing belts fit (which they did!) and then drove down to Baxter.

While in Portland you talked with Mr. Amory extensively about the camera/light setup in the submersible. You also got to see more of what the kids at Baxter are doing on the project. After meeting with Mr. Amory you and Nick ate at El Rayo in Portland. After leaving El Rayo with out take-out order we quickly stopped at the electronics store for some 2W 1K resistors for measuring the voltage of the batteries.

Once you got home you ate your burrito and then headed to frisbee practice. After a productive frisbee practice (the team learned the "dice" and the "ykk") you headed to swimming. Swimming was also good, but you were extremely tired afterwards.

After swimming you went to the community center for the tennis teams's spaghetti dinner fundraiser. You met Nick at the fundraiser. The food was good.

At around 10:00 you met with Nick, Liam, and Josef in your basement. You showed  everybody the camera feed and Josef tested it with OpenCV (which worked fairly well...it needed to be sent a slow frame-rate though). While in the basement you worked on running strings/processes using python.

At around 23:00 you tested the voltage divider with the 2W resistors mentioned above. Unfortunately, they also got warm, but you do not understand as the divider you created should only use .5W not 2W...you will recalculate the values tomorrow. Here's a picture of the 2W resistors!

MEMUNC 2014 – Berlin Conference 1884 (5/13 - 5/15)

You just returned from a three day endeavor at the Maine Model United Nations conference in Gorham, Maine. For the past couple of months you have been meeting every Monday night from 7:00-8:15 to practice parliamentary procedure, negotiating, and to do research on your country. As a delegate in the first every throwback committee (the Berlin Conference 1884) you had to do research on the United States POV...this was difficult as the US did not even attend the conference (the US was an observer state). It didn't phase you though. You entered committee ready to make change. Your tried multiple times to create an inter-contiental railroad in Africa and open up the continent to further economic exploitation (although while trying to help the African people). You also tried to get voting status rather than observer status for the United States. Unfortunately, neither of you proposals passed. This was due to the insanely fluid stance many European countries shared...at first they were extremely racist (as they should be), but they quickly started to support African terrorists.

MEMUC Insignia

After three days of debate, a dodgeball game (which you helped win), and a disappointing Jeopardy game, the conference was over. At the awards ceremony you won Best Delegate for the Berlin Conference (and won a cool surf helmet) and also was apart of the US delegation which won best delegation at the conference!! Yay!

Although the past three days had been exciting, you had not worked on the project much. On Tuesday, you, Nick, and Liam met. You ordered supplies online, finalized pieces for the laser harp, and learned a new frisbee throw.

After the conference you went to frisbee. You were very thirsty and dehydrated there. After that you went to swimming and now are finally about to eat dinner.

It was a good three days, although this weekend will be much more productive for the project.

Model UN - USA in the UNSSS (5/13-5/15)

You decided to combine these three days into one post as most of what happened is not pertinent to your senior project. You did do some work on Tuesday morning at Travis's after you biked to his house. You ordered a few necessary parts from amazon.com and worked on the laser harp which you hope might work for senior diner…

You also did some work with planning out the rest of the week and thinking about how to do the power transfer on the spool.

Tuesday afternoon you headed to the school where the entire Freeport delegation headed to Maine Model United Nations. You had a lot over fun over the next two days. You were a part of the United Nations Special Session on Sports and were a delegate from the USA.

In the end, Freeport won the dodgeball game, the USA won best delegation, and you got the diplomacy award for your committee.

You then returned home this (Thursday) afternoon just in time to change out of a suit and head to frisbee practice. You really enjoyed getting to play frisbee and running around after a few long days of deliberation stuck in fairly small rooms with many people.

You are now fairly tired and look forward to sleeping for a long time tonight.

Stuff I Could have Learned...

Today you woke up on time for school and ready to work on the project! You went to Nick's house after dropping your brother off for school and sat in a chair for a while. After reading up on different things for the project you went upstairs to make sure Nick was alive....

At Nick's you ordered a half-sphere for the submersible and decided what to do with the oversized batteries (oversized for our 8in float). You also thought you figured out how to measure the battery voltage of the batteries, but were mistaken (as you found out later that evening).

After finished up at Nick's, both you and Nick went back to your house. While at your house you ordered the final HobbyKing motors and ESCs. Unfortunately for you, they were out of the ESCs we had been using, but it ended up working out as the slightly stronger ESCs would still work for our thrusters.

You also tested running processes in Python using Threads (which worked very nicely). The software for the sub and float is finally coming together.

Around 12:00 you and Nick stopped by the bank and then headed over for the AP Physics test...

After the test you went to Frisbee practice (which you thought was sweltering hot) and then you went to swimming. After swimming you ate 3 hamburgers and a big bowl of pasta. Around 20:15 Jessica came over after her softball game and Nick came to drop off his gear for Model UN.

At 22:15 you drove Jess home and then started working on the voltage divider you thought would work to measure the voltage of the battery on the float. Using this simple formula (below) it was supposed to be easy to step down the voltage of a system. By stepping down the system you could then read the analog output from the battery easily through the ADC on the BeagleBone Black.

But sadly nothing is easy...it seems that the 1/4 Watt resistors didn't have a large enough power rating to handle the current (although nothing was being drawn...). You proffer this using Joule's Law (below):

In conclusion you will need to purchase larger resistors (maybe 10W?) to handle to current running through the resistors. Once you're able to read the stepped down voltage you will be able to easily translate that to % battery life for the LiFePO4 batteries on the float.

Physics and Packing

You had an overall good day today. You woke up and Travis came over around 0830. You bought some things, looked into depth mapping, and contemplated fitting batteries in the float.

You then headed to Travis's around 1000 and bought some more things, and continued work on the things in the above listing.

You then went to the Community Library to take the Physics test, which was a little bit easier than you expected. You felt pretty good on the long answer and a good portion of the multiple choice, but you are not holding your breath as it probably wont be a 5.

You then went to frisbee. It was a very hot practice but you and the team learned a couple plays, worked on handling and scrimmaged a bit.

Finally you went home to pack and prepare for Model UN over the next couple of days. And, once done packing, you sat down to the Bruin's game which unfortunately was not a good game (for the Bruins anyway). You are looking forward to the next few days at Model UN and hope to bring home best delegation with the rest of the US.

Mother's Day

Today you didn't actually work on the project. You woke up and made a card for mother's day, and helped to make crepes. Breakfast was very good and mom seemed to enjoy it.

Then you mowed the lawn. This took a long time as it was the first use of the tractor this year. So the battery was dead, the bagger didn't all fit together correctly on the first try, and a few other things went wrong. All in all, the lawn got mowed and looks pretty good.

You then went driving with your sister and father as she is taking her driver's test this week and wanted some tips on what they look for and where in Brunswick they take you.

While driving you got a little bit of project work done by talking to your father. You talked about how best to make brushes for energy transfer on the float. It turns out that it is better to use a brush with a metal strip as the "spring" instead of using one of the actual spring based brushes.

Finally you had diner from Thai Garden and looked at a little physics in preparation for tomorrow's test.

Weekend 1 - Mother's Day

Today you did not do too much for the project.

You woke up early and made your mom breakfast. Later you went on a walk and had a nice dinner.

For the project you finished setting up the Python Server/Socket Module on the BeagleBone. You also decided on different ways to run the communication/data/motor system due to some deficiencies in the software. Overall though the software is looking good. Your very excited to get RoboGoby 1.0 into the water and working!

As promised, below is a video of the rocket fuel you made yesterday:

Weekend 1 - Some Free Time

You had a good Saturday, although you did not get that much done for the project. In the morning you used the 5 pounds of Potassium Nitrate you bought to make an awesome sugar-rocket surprise. The stuff you made was explosive! and awesome.

At 13:15 Nick, Liam, and Josef came over. Josef work on streaming video, while Nick and Liam worked on the list of materials we need to purchase for the project. You helped Josef with the video streaming and finally finished the TCP Python Server (which took a while for some reason). You also helped create the list which included a few things. You ended up purchasing timing belts for the float, materials for the thrusters, and double o-ring seals for both the submersible and the float. You and Nick decided on the best way to seal the sub and the float and walked away feeling good about both designs. You also read the post Nick wrote about the first half Float V2, edited it, and added some pictures. You also planned on meeting Monday morning at Nick's to choose the brushes need for the power transfer on the float (from the batteries through the spool and into the wire).

You had a productive day because the materials you purchased today will allow you to finish the entire float next weekend (including the tether). It will also allow you to start work on the actual submersible (by hopefully finishing the LEDs and heat-sinks).

After spending around 3 hours on the project, you made some more rocket fuel and ignited it in some water (it burned surprising well half submerged). Tomorrow you will have a video demonstration...sadly you did not take a video today.

Your also excited to read the new volume of Make!

A laid back Saturday

Nick, your Saturday was pretty easy. You slept quite late by your standards (1030), this was a very good thing as you had felt pretty sick the night before. Upon waking you felt much more rested and not as sick.

You sat down to write a blog post around 1130, and you took about 45 minutes to write up the first draft of the Float V2 - Spool half. Later on Josef and Travis edited, added pictures to, and posted that blog post.

Around 1315 all four of you met up at Travis's house. You worked on video streaming again, getting quite close to a solution. You and Liam also looked for waterproof lock boxes that could store the electronics in the submersible. This proved impossible as there were none with the right sizes that were also rated to any depth greater than 100ft.

With that in mind you started thinking about other possible ways to water proof the electronics. You decided to get some o-rings from McMaster as well as latches. You plan to use these to test a couple possible answers, and if one works to make the final version sometime in the next week and a half.

Along with that you got some things from McMaster for the float, the LED heat sinks, and Mr. Amory's kids down at Baxter Academy.

Lastly you went to the Middle School's production of the musical Annie at the Mast Landing School.

All in all it was a laid back day and you feel very recovered after being tired, sore, and sick due to yesterday's frisbee game against Cumberland.

An Evening's Work

Sadly today was not as productive as you hoped for. In the morning you took the AP Language and Composition test. After the test, you quickly grabbed something to eat, and then headed back to school. At school you handed in your physics final and dropped a slinky off of a balcony. After physics you handed in your WHAP assignments and said your goodbyes to Mr. Mellon. After that you waited to check in with Mrs. Donovan about this Senior Project.

After school ended you drove Freeport B (frisbee) to Twin Brooks and then headed over to Cumberland Fair Grounds. At 3:30 you played Cumberland A. You had a good, intense game, and was glad for the challenge.

After Frisbee you drove home and took a quick shower in order to make it to Cabaret on time. You watched the Cabaret and were especially drawn to the free food (cookies and crackers + cheese).

After the concert you met back at your house with Josef and Nick. You found an easy way to stream data between the float in the sub and tested the power draw of the smaller stepper motor on the float. You also did some more research on measuring the life of our onboard batteries using an embedded linux system (either BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi).

Most of the day you would have rather been working on the project, but many things made this impossible.

And here is a video of a slinky drop similar to the one you did today:

A narrow victory

Today you managed to get a lot of work done despite being at the school all day. This morning you attended World History class, where you turned in your final and reviewed for the test. After that you went and worked on the heat sinks for the LEDs in the library. This took up all of period 3/4 and Falcon as well as some of lunch. The final solution involved gaining five degrees in two separate ways, so that in combination they make an angle of ten degrees with the front of the submersible. This was a very confusing way to solve the problem and took a  lot of trial and error.

After lunch came physics, in which we reviewed for the AP exam and turned in our finals. We also discussed various physics phenomena, and decided to test one by dropping a slink off the FPAC balcony. It is really cool to watch because the bottom of the slinky stay suspended in the air, mere inches above the ground, while the top of the slinky fall all the way down. Only when the top reaches and hits the bottom does it fall the few inches to the ground.

After physics you, Travis, and Josef met up with Ms. Donovan for the advisor meeting. Liam wasn't in attendance as he had chorus. The meeting went well and you now know that we are presenting to about 800 people for the MLTI conference.

After school ended you headed to the ultimate game with the rest of the team. After a back and forth game that was very physical FU came out victorious (11-10) at hard cap. After a quick diner and shower you watched the Cabaret (which was quite good).

After that you and Josef headed over to Travis's house and made a breakthrough on the motors and possibly video streaming. It turns out you can easily control the amperage draw of the servo motors by adjusting the trim pot on the controller board. Josef and Travis found that you would be able to send videos via a socket server, the only questions that remain is how fast is it and can you write over a file so it doesn't get really big.

Finally a full day's work (5/8)

Nick, you had a very busy day this thursday. You woke up early so that you and the rest of Limbeck could get signatures and turn in your senior project paper work. After meeting up at school you, Liam, and Travis headed to your house. Josef didn't come as he had AP Lit testing until noon.

At your house you got and amp clamp and a big battery to test stepper motor. You then all headed to Travis's where you worked on various things. Unfortunately one of them was not the motor because while you remembered all the auxiliary parts, you forgot the motor. Instead you worked a bit with camera streaming. The majority of the time at Travis's (from about 0900 to 1220) you made SolidWorks designs of the LED lights, their heat sinks, and the camera. As you have chosen the four inch PVC for the sub it turns out that putting the lights inside creates many logistical problems.

This difficulty led you back to the original design with the lights on the outside of the submersible. Unfortunately the submarine is now a much smaller diameter and so the designs had to be changed. You had almost no problems with the lights that will be pointed straight out, however the lights that will be angled down proved more challenging. You found it nearly impossible to get the ten of even fifteen degrees of slant desired.

You left Travis's at 1220 to for to Liam's for lunch, which his mother had kindly offered to make. We had great sandwiches, ate some chips, and played with the dog for a bit. You then stopped by your house on the way to Travis's to get the motor you had originally forgotten. Upon returning to Travis's you spent about 45 minutes trying to test the amperage on the motor to no avail.

Frisbee was then from 1430 to 1630 as usual; unusually there were very few people there and you played nine on nine with two subs each.

After practice you went home and, while watching the Bruins overtime win against the Montreal Canadians, you finished both the AP World History and AP Physics finals which were due on Friday.

Python Beginnings

You woke up this morning and headed to school. You finally "started" your Senior Project, by getting Miss Jensen's signature on your project sheet. After meeting up with Nick and Liam at the school, you headed to Nick's. At Nick's you measured the distance around the two pulley systems and added timing belts to the McMaster cart. You then brought a 12v battery and amp clamp back you your house to test on the stepper motors.

At your hose your spent a while reading more about MJPG-Streamer, but got nowhere. You decided to start writing the RoboGoby Python software (snapshot below).

After a few hours you, Nick, and Liam went to Liam's house for lunch. Lunch was very good. You ate 3 sandwiches!

After lunch we stopped by Nick's to pick up a stepper motor and then went back to your house to test its Amp draw. Sadly, you did not have time to get it working because of frisbee practice.

At 14:30 you went to frisbee practice and had a long scrimmage, but you were very tired. After frisbee you went to swimming. After swimming you went home, finished the Physics final, tweaked your brochure.

To you it seemed like a long day.

Still at School (5/5)

Your name is Liam Wade, and you just started your first days of Senior Projects. Durring your first day of Senior Projects you could be mistaken for thinking it was a regular school day. You had to attend Jazz Class, Chorus, AP Calculus, and AP Physics. You couldn't find time between classes and extra curricular activities to work on the project and thusly failed to achieve much of anything. Y'all collectivity to begin writing journals in 2nd person. Tomorrow you hope to accomplish great success in the development of the float. Your plan is to switch from the pre-determined wooden design. Once the school day ended you had hoped to go to frisbee practice however the Calculus final proved longer than expected and denied you from attending.

MATH and more MATH

You woke up today ready to take the Calc BC Exam. It took around 5 hours. You liked most of the questions except the infinite series ones...

After the exam, you went home, baked some bagels + red peppers + provolone, and sat down to eat. While you were eating, Josef and Nick almost ate ALL of your favorite ice cream (which is Moose Tracks). After eating, you went down stairs and continued testing MJPG-Streamer. Tomorrow you think you'll make your own MJPG-Streamer node giving you all a constant rtsp stream (without a web server). At around 16:00 you carpooled over to Cumberland Fairgrounds and battled Casco Bay High School frisbee style. You had a decent game, but wished they had been a little better.

After frisbee you went home and ate, washed dishes, took a shower, and then headed over to Nick's to finish up V2:1 (first half of float V2). You worked efficiently! Below is the finished product (and Nick)!

B.N. - Tomorrow there will be an longer, more explanatory post about Float V2 on RoboGoby's Project Blog.

Nick + Float V2:1