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: