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.