Immersion Testing: Sink or Swim

Salutations!

With a little over a month until our departure for Eurekafest, our build team has put in countless hours preparing the HAV for its maiden voyage.

The thrusters and polycarbonate have since been mounted to the frame, and we are in the process of getting one PCB board done for our plug and play probe interface. While the code for getting data from the probeware is in the works, our main focus, at least for the past week, has been waterproofing the electronics and their housings.

Having already spent three days at Lincoln Community Pool, we’ve ruled out using plumber’s putty and duct tape as our waterproofing agents, and, despite the time it will take to dry, we have settled on a marine epoxy/sealer. In fact, the build team has decided against buying a new OpenROV control board, after the old one suffered water and corrosion damage, though the tether system will still be utilized. We will instead be using the Blue Robotics thrusters, for programming/building ease and have switched to an entirely custom control system with a raspberry pi and arduino.

While it is evident that we will need a few more days in the community pool, spread out over the next week or so, our end goal remains the Newark Bay. 

Until Next Time,
The Bayonne High School InvenTeam