| 2010 NURC
Tech Report For the 2010 robot, we developed a custom-built PIC microcontroller to handle the sensing and navigation duties of our ROV. Unfortunately, we were unable to finish this board in time, and instead used the 2005 FIRST Robot Controller as a substitute at NURC. As a result, we were unable to integrate our digital compass and temperature sensors, since these components relied on the unavailable I2C interface. However, we were able to successful interface our analog pressure sensor, and use it to calculate our depth underwater. Due to this last-minute change, we were also unable to use our C# GUI, which we had developed to communicate with the Python daemon running on our ROV. We also suffered another setback when our BaneBots speed controllers failed, forcing us to revert to 12V for the Seabotix thrusters, which explains the lackluster performance of our ROV. Nevertheless, our high brightness LED lights were a major success, as they provided a combined output of over 540 lumens, more than enough to illuminate the pool for our ROV. Due to safety issues with using onboard lithium polymer batteries, we reverted to standard 12V sealed lead acid onboard batteries, which also happened to provide enough weight to counteract the buoyancy of our electronics enclosure. Although we originally intended to only use a Cat-5e cable as our tether, we were forced to add a second serial line and a third camera line since the custom microcontroller was not completed in time. | |
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