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.