Marinetech

Scroll down to read the article on Jason Smith in the 5/21/05 issue of the Santa Barbara News Press.

Congratulations Jason, Amy and Adrianna and to all of you.

Good luck everyone.

-don

Spring 2005 class: Congratulations to all four ROV Teams. This was an awesome group of designs with 100% success. 

Tuesday the group met to discuss the progress of the ROV and the coming presentation at Jacksons pad. We assigned areas to be ready for presentation and planned a power point which Jon will put together. When we were talking it became apparent that a lot of work was done by each member that was not documented fully or even known by all team members so we planned to rectify that on the final review with each person having a few moments to explain their involvement. Jacob volunteered to fill any awkward silences.

This past week was quite eventful, we put our ROV together got our wiring and potting together. We will be putting it in the water tomorrow to see how she flies. Some new problems crept up at the last minute; First when attempting to wire the camera in using removable connectors we somehow shorted out the camera. Hopefully, our replacement camera will be in time if not, Tiger Shark task force had an extra camera that they will gratiously allow us to use. We have some stability problems with our frame with the lower section, set screws don't seem to be holding, we believe a crossmember across the bottom will do the trick and maybe able to add some much needed weight up front. The last problem that crept up was the lack of kort nozzles on our ROV, we scrapped them early because they decreased power significantly (50%). The problem is on the rear motors especially is that there is no protection from props to the umbilical. We made a trip to the hardware store and we think we have an elegant solution to give our props some guards but allow all sorts of water in hopefully without sacrificing power. Tomorrow after solving the last two remaining problems we will water test it. One last note our software is done feature wise it just needs some prettying up. See you all tomorrow and good luck with your finals.

Thursday the x wing was worked on again and it had a leak that was exposed by the application of internal pressure, the screw in connectors leaked that were being used for the thru hull wiring. We should have had an o ring in the assembly. The leaking area was 'potted' and the problem was not solved, so scotch guard was liberally applied, and it did not solve the problem, then the guts were pulled out and the scotch guard solution was applied internally and we had success.

Saturday the X wing went on its maiden voyage and worked but had major buoyancy issues. The ballast that was applied was tricky because it seemed by design to be an unstable creation. The X wing was able to fly upside down fairly well because that made the large 4" pipe hull center at the top. The design could be salvaged by application of a keel but the group cannot decide on the solution yet. The whole project is close to the finish and close to being judged.

Our ROV is coming together, today we worked on getting all of the electronics inside our enclosure. It is a tight fit but we did manage to get it all in there except the camera and tilt mechanism some more modification needs to be done to mount the camera inside. We hope to tackle that problem tomorrow. When we get the electronics together we can finish building our frame. We need all the electronics in the housing so we know if our housing will be flotation (as it is empty) or dead weight and put our frame together accordingly.
Later this week Jason will finalize the software/hardware combination with all thrusters working.

Team One

Today for lab we worked on a totally new frame, changed the umbilical lines, changed the working board, started a new connection point on the control box to make the umbilical disconnect, started a new port window, its all new.

Today we got together and completed our home work the last assignment. Most of us took questions and answered them sending them to Ryan who is pasting them in to our final report, this approach worked very efficiently.

The plan for tommorrow is to complete the rov assembly.

The team met again today to delegate more resposibilities. The progress has come full circle coming back to a more simple approach and letting some of the dreams be set aside to get a basic working model together.

The special foam is way to buoyant and will not be used. The moveable camera idea is scrapped and will be two fixed cameras. The main body has been changed out by advice from Don on our penetrations. The working board will be duplicated with a safety backup to provide for emergencies like flooding. The gloves have been wired to the relays successfully. The relays run the pump motors just fine. The small water props are great and give good thrust they are available at a hobby shop off state street.

More to come.................