Meeting Notes 10/8/12

Meeting Type: Advisor Meeting

Attending:

Advisor(s): Dr. Frank, Dr. Harvey

Members: Alex, Kyle, Sondra, Darryl

Excused: Santi, Stuart, Greg

Action Items

1. ECEs: Post all research to your personal blogs if not done already

Meeting Topics

• Prospective changes in design
• Comments on our design
• Considerations and requirements to keep in mind during design

Important Notes

• ECE Blogs and lab notebooks are a course requirement and should contain everything you research
  • Also a good idea for the MEs as well to document their work
• We should start working on the software ASAP

Transcript (Notes)

• Hasn’t had a chance to look at our Needs Analysis
• Dr. Frank and Dr. Harvey checked that we have a good knowledge of what we need to change
  • We’ll put it on our project proposal
• EE Changes:
  • Main computer is fried
    • We’re upgrading to better computer
    • We’re not using the Beagle boards because they’re not powerful enough for image processing
  • Separating the power system
  • New voltage regulators
• ME changes:
  • New body
  • New frame ( reusing extruded aluminum
  • Frame win’t cover the top, so we don’t have to remove it to get in
  • Goal is to use only 4 of the thrusters to maintain stability
  • Just take the top off to work on stuff
    • Reduce issues with reconnecting wires when opening and closing
• Lab notebook and blog is a course requirement
  • Put EVERYTHING you’ve been working on on your blog
• We have “two” group websites, and some of the group has personal blogs
  • We’re gonna put our content on Wordpress, the other one will be primarily for the grade
  • Alex will check if Wordpress can output HTML for the ME site, but it probably can’t
• Kyle posted Dr. Clark presentation to ECE Blackboard
• Dr. Harvey reminded us that our sub must be negatively buoyant on no power
• Dr. Harvey mentioned the middle school team with the Tupperware sub
• Dr. Harvey suggests the software be done starting immediately
• Dr. Frank looked at our new box, we showed him the CAD model
  • Waterproofing
    • Double o-ring
    • Rubber gasket
  • Lid
    • Dr. Harvey warned about not making lid too thin (seal) or too thick (weight)
  • Thruster mounting
    • Dr. Harvey: pitch/yaw control, how will we do that without the extra thrusters
    • Dr. Harvey: should examine water flow over the system
  • Make sure we tie all the grounds together
    • Otherwise we can get glitches where the sub just stops working after a while due to the floating grounds
  • Keeping old batteries, adding a pack for the other electronics, and a pack for the computer
    • No voltage regulation between batteries and computer
    • MAKE SURE WE INSERT FUSES BETWEEN BATTERIES AND ELECTRONICS
      • Insert fuses as “inline fuses”
      • Slow-blow fuse for thrusters (for voltage spikes at start)
  • Keeping old thrusters and very similar Arduino setup
  • Compressed air
    • May get faster speed of launch if we just push air against the torpedo
  • Motor driver
    • Connect a piece of metal to the heat sink to dissipate heat
    • They shut down when hot, which is obviously bad, but much better than melting
• Issues last year were largely with seals
  • Even with testing, things wear down after a while
• We’ll be using the Arduinos to control all the external components
• Avoid internal conflicts so we don’t end up with fights like last year’s team
• Use the IMU to track your past movements to relocate the path when you use it
• Main challenge of this project is the underwater testing, the Moorecom pool is not permanent and it’s hard to do a thorough enough test to be ready for the competition
• Sonar pingers should be tested ASAP to figure out how to use them
• Unit testing is very important
• We don’t know how to design the control
• Mechanicals will be giving us our flow effect measurement
  • Equations of motion
• Simulator would allow us to test things more easily, but would be very difficult to make

Questions

• Purchasing issues
  • Cannot purchase without PO on ME
  • Fouraker: give them a part number, they order it, we PO it from them
  • Granger: another place that sells like anything through a PO
  • Suggest we buy everything we know we need on a PO ASAP
  • Dr. Frank helped Alex with looking for a computer through PO
• Use a power FET to run the Arduino high logic to turn on the actuators
  • Actuators may work in pairs, with one pushing and the other pulling on the air flow
• Go to Battery Source here in town for batteries right in town, they also do POs.
  • Alex says he’ll go take a look
  • FSU may be able to get order through in 2 days for pickup
• Think ahead when doing POs, you need to order all your extras at once and have time to spare

Group Notes

Not available.