Mana

May 5, 2017

Today we as a team were interviewed by Mrs. S about the general concepts of a ROV and how it works. After finishing this, I headed out to the mini pool to try testing the already made ROVs and learned how to control them. It was harder than I thought because the ROV would not move in my desired direction, but it was definitely fun to see it moving by my control. Later on, we finished adding pictures on our ROV challenge guide page for completion. We will be receiving our box next period, and hope to start planning out the structure of our robot while also getting insight on how it will be built.

May 9, 2017
Today we assigned each member of our team to either the control building, motor building, and framing. Jennifer and I worked on the motor building, and after watching all the tutorials, we went and tried out the practice activities which consisted of stripping wires and soldering! Stripping wires was hard because I kept on cutting the whole wire off, but eventually I got the hang of it.The best one to use is the 2nd hole in the cutter! After that, we got to try soldering which was very difficult. The soldering iron would not melt the wire, and so it also took a lot of patience. It took a lot of try and errors but after a couple times, we were successful with one. Next time, I will continue to solder, and then will proceed into waterproofing it!

May 11, 2017
Today we continued on soldering from last time. I have gotten used to using it now, and so it went smoother than last time. In order to save materials, we didn't waterproof them , but we went straight on to building our motor system. This job consisted of attaching the propellers to the motor. Although most of the job went smoothly, we struggled a little bit with taking off the brown object that was already attached on the motor. Next time we will put Loctite on the set screw, screw it in, and then we will be finished with this section!

May 12th, 2017
Today, Jennifer and I attached the propellers to the motors, and then proceeded to creating the tether management cross. We got a little confused on which wire to put through one pipe, because we thought the wires from one motor went through only one pipe, whereas it was really all motor wires went through the same pipe. After finishing the tether management cross, we started connecting the tether to the motors. We cut away the sheathing of the tether, but accidentally cut off the sheathing of the wires itself and so the wire was exposed, and so we had to cut off that part as well. Next time, we will waterproof the tether and then possibly start soldering the tether wires and motor wires together.

May 16, 2017
Today we worked on connecting the tether to the motors. We put the black sheath on the tether, but plan on waterproofing it at the end in case we make mistake. We cut off about 1 cm of the sheathing from both the tether ends and the motor ends. We managed not to cut any yay! We also labeled the tether cables to the motors they matched, so it would be easier when we had to connect a specific motor wire to the tether. Next time we will solder the tether cables and motor cables to the right color, and then waterproof them!

May 18, 2017
Today we worked on soldering the motor wires and tether wires together. We first twisted the wires together so they would stay put, but a lot of times they came off and so we separated the wires one by one and then twisted them together, which made it much easier to hold in place. The soldering went well, but it was very hard to cover the whole thing because turning the wires around was very difficult. After we finished soldering, we placed hot glue on the soldered part, and then shrunk the plastic shielding. After shrinking the shielding, we realized that you didn't have to put glue all over because when you shrunk it, the glue would expand by itself. Next time, we will waterproof all of the wires and then connect the control box to it, and then hopefully we will get our robot in the water!!

May 19, 2017
We finally finished waterproofing our wires and tether. It was a little difficult making sure that the opening of the wire was completely waterproofed because we sometimes forgot to put enough glue inside and it would not stick. After finishing our tether an motor system, we helped Beth finish her power cord and waterproofing it. The control box successfully worked, and next time we will be connecting the motor system to the control system and then put it on the frame. Then hopefully we can test it in the mini pool!