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.