.5 of the Through-holes done

Today you woke up at 08:00 and got ready for the day. You started a blog post about the spool and power transfer system. You waited for Nick and Liam to show up before heading down to Baxter. 

On the way down to Baxter you stopped at H.R. Distributors to buy a LM317 variable voltage regulator. This regulator was supposed to regulate any voltage entering the circuit to a specific output which is controlled by using different resistor values. After leaving the electronics store you headed to a local hardware store to pick up 6-32 hex bolts for the camera pots. Unfortunately, they did not carry the bolts you guys needed. 

You then met Josef at Baxter. At Baxter you worked on connecting the ESC controllers to the motors. You used liquid electrical tape and heat shrink to connect the motors. You had to fix the setup twice, but by the end of the day you had finished one section (two through holes). An image of the motor + controller setup is pictured below. While you were doing this Nick and Liam worked with Mr. Amory on the rear thruster design and Josef worked on finishing the OCU code. 

After returning home at 14:50 you worked on creating the power system for the BeagleBone before you headed to Jess's softball game. You found out that the LM317  regulates the voltage linearly in relation to the supply voltage (although it's not supposed to!). You decided to use a combo of the LM317 and UA7805 to created a regulated 5v supply for the BeagleBone. 

After going to Jess's game between 16:00 and 17:20, you headed with your swim coach to a meeting in Northport. After a 2.5 hour meeting from 19:00 to 21:30, you headed home. In the car you wrote this blogpost. It was a long day, but you got a lot done. You can't wait to finish potting the computers and cameras with epoxy this weekend and especially can't wait to finish the thrusters on Monday! Hopefully you guys will have something in the water next week. 

Collaborative CAD

You woke up late today (0845) as you forgot to set an alarm. You then quickly rushed over to Travis's house to carpool down to Baxter. On the way you bough a couple resistors and a voltage step-down so that you could run the BeagleBone off the batteries. You also stopped at a hardware store to buy 6-32 bolts, but they didn't have any.

At Baxter you and Liam went and helped Mr. Amory figure out how to cut out the main thruster container. This took a couple hours, from about 0945 to 1200, as the MasterCam software for SolidWorks was acting up a little bit.

After that you went to lunch with Mr. Amory, Josef, Liam, and Travis at Portland Pie Company. Upon returning you quickly finished the main thruster CAD model.

You then went down stairs and helped Travis to glue the small thrusters together in to the main body of the submersible. The four of you then went back to Freeport and went to frisbee (except for Travis). Frisbee went better than yesterday but was still a bit more relaxed than you would have liked.

You then went to the dinner that Ethan W. and Naomi were putting on for their senior project. The food was quite good and it was a nine course meal.

Thrusters and the Spool

Today you woke up at 07:00 in order to meet at the HS with the Senior Project advisory group. You showed up at 07:50 for a 08:00 meeting. The meeting did not occur on time (it was only supposed to take 10 minutes) and you were upset at that.

After leaving the school you and Nick headed down to Baxter to finish up the through holes on the sub. Shortly after getting to the school you ordered some parts on Amazon and worked on the code to spool the tethers.

At around 10:00 you met with Mr. Amory and then started working on the through hole thrusters. You hot-glued the through-holes together, and attached the  props to the motors, and waterproofed the motor connections.

You worked on the thrusters until 14:20, and then headed to frisbee. Before frisbee, you stopped to get multiple hairs cut. After the hair cutting, you went to the HS and played a long game of pick-up firs bee in the field hockey field. After frisbee, you went to swimming.

After swimming, you met Nick and Josef at Nick's house. While there, you finished wrapping the other 130 feet of tether (adding the foam and nice casing). The tether is now done. You also worked for multiple hours on getting the power transfer complete. Below is an image of the brushes we made to easily transfer the power from the batteries to the tether:

Finishing Up the Server (5/28)

Today was another day of Python.

You woke up at 08:00 and worked a little bit on sprucing up the code. You then went into town to first get flowers for Prom, and then talk to Mrs. Barter and Mrs. Donovan at the HS. After talking with both people, you returned home and met with Josef while Nick and Liam were at Baxter.

You spent a few hours working to perfect the Python code, and ultimately settled on using a one-server system (instead of a two server) that read the IPs of connected devices and allocated either listening or sending based on that IP.

After [mostly] finishing the servers, you went to Frisbee practice as your game against Forest City (Portland) had been canceled. You also received the schedule for states. Freeport is seeded 5th out of 12 teams! You also had to scramble last minute to get a chaperone for the team as there is no coach, but we need a legal adult (over 21) to act as a chaperone at states.

After frisbee, you went to swimming and then came home. You worked a little on the python code, and then went out to dinner with Jessica.

A collection of parts

Today you woke up around 0700 to get to school at 0800 for a practice presentation. You only went because it was required and it didn't go too smoothly because the dongle doesn't work for computers and we didn't have an actual presentation made up yet.

You then headed down to Baxter with Travis (arriving around  0915) and started work on printing the shelves for the embedded Linux computers. After getting the 3D printer started you went down stairs and glued in one end off all the thruster tubes.

You then worked on water proofing the leads to the motors as they aren't very well made at the joint where water might get in. After doing that you both headed to Portland Pie for lunch, which lasted from about 1150 to 1215.

You then went back to work on the motors some more, while Travis went to get a tux and some resistors. While he was out you tapped four metal rods that will serve as the propellor shaft and when Travis got back you press fit the onto the motors.

After that you headed to frisbee, which was at the field hockey field today because there weren't enough rides for everyone. It wasn't a great practice as nobody took it that seriously, and you hurt yourself making a diving catch.

After frisbee you headed back to your house and showered, then Josef and Travis came over around 1800. You three put together the rest of the tether while took more than an hour and a half. Then you and Travis worked on the power transfer system on the float while Josef fixed some coding issues that he had in the main Java program.

You finally finished a rough draft of the power transfer system at 2330.

Baxter and cancelled frisbee

You went to Baxter again today. Liam came over and you carpooled down to Baxter around 0930. When you arrived you got the 3D printer going to create the boxes that your embedded linux devices will be held in.

After that you worked in CAD a bit more and got the shelving done for the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black. You then headed downstairs to work with the CNC router. You tried to cut out the motor slots in the thruster however the g-code was messed up. Thus you have to make more thruster modules to replace the two that were made incorrectly.

You then went back up to the computer lab and worked some more on heat-sinks. After eating lunch Mr. Amory showed up and together you three came up with the best option for the heat sinks: a metal rod that holds the LED and lens in it. Mr. Amory then modified the g-code and gave it to you to use on the CNC router.

You cut out the four thruster pieces and they are now almost ready for assembly. You then headed to Portland Pi for lunch. Upon returning you did some work in the computer lab on making a brace for the servo motor that will be doing camera tilt.

You then headed back to Freeport for frisbee practice around 1400 as the game was cancelled due to bad field conditions. At practice you made-up and taught everyone a new play called "Loom."

You then went home around 1645 and worked on the brace for the servo motor, coming up with a good if not final solution. You also talked to your dad about the connectors that you plan to use on the sub and he thinks it needs to be rethought.

Finally you started the matriculation process for Princeton by setting up and e-mail and similar things.

Python and Unhappiness :(

This morning you woke up and started to work on organizing the code for the project. You first organized the sensor code, finding the best possible way to send the sensor data. You organized the strings into an easily readable format. After working on the code for a few hours, you went into town to find out about renting space at the middle school. Unfortunately, it was very expensive...On the way back home you stopped at the bank and checked the company balance (which was higher than you had anticipated).

After returning home, you continued to work on the code. You stopped for a quick lunch break at around 11:00. Josef then came over. You worked with him on finally getting to server/client python/java pair working and controlling a motor! After putting the right delay in the code (.75 seconds) the motors seemed to react almost flawlessly!

After finishing with the motors you headed to swimming at 16:00. After swimming you ate a TON because you were very hungry from not eating much during the day.

After swimming you worked more on fixing the code. You were trying to send data earlier in the day, but it had not worked. This was due to many different problems...after 3 jour hours of problem solving you finally fixed most of it. That was NO fun at all. Below is a funny picture you used to cheer yourself up.