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.