The Code Bender

Well, we didn't quite make it under the gate to qualify yesterday sadly but we've got another shot today which we're much better prepared for.  We've currently got a practice run scheduled for 10:20 and we're expecting good results.  We spent a late night last night outside the pool at the Kona Kai getting things ready and we're confident going forward that we've at least got a shot of breaking the top 10.

I'll start with yesterday thought, kind of a frustrating day for us.  Seawolf was having bugs creep up that were about as off the wall as they come.  During our qualification run Seawolf was having trouble doing anything but spinning in circles and trying to attack our poor diver.  It's quickly become apparent that when Seawolf goes into a spin the extruded aluminum coming off the rear of our craft acts as a rather scary weapon in addition to the handles they were intended.  The divers are nimble though and averted any injury but after trying to take him out a few times, we pulled our ornery bot out of the water and set to debugging.  While we're not 100% sure what was causing the problem it appears it was related to attempting to use our magnetic kill switch as a mission start.  Surprise, surprise, electronics + magnets = problems.

We quickly scheduled a practice run and sadly... we found similar results.  Seawolf was in a mood to fight and little else.  After a bit of messing around and some debugging at TRANSDEC we headed out in somewhat low spirits.  On our way out of Point Loma we happned to see another van, and it was on.  After the necessary egging on back and forth, we found that it was virginia tech, both in our 15 person rental vans.  We took off and they followed suit.  With engines roaring (a rather impressive sound, not that that translated to much in terms of speed) we barreled through San Diego.  We have the superior craft when it comes to vans though and we were eventually forced off the road as our destination approached, but there's nothing like a roaring engine (regardless of speed.. and with loaded vans there wasn't much of that) to introduce a little injection of some much needed fun into the evening. 

After grabbing a bite a Baha Fresh we headed back to the Kona Kai only to discover a full scale Luau taking place right outside our door. We took in some sights and sounds for a few minutes before packing up Seawolf and heading to the pool to correct our rather disabled craft.  After returning to our RFID card mission start system we found some improvement, at least now all of our motots were staying on, we still had some issues to debug with our yaw PID (control code).  Chris started correcting problems one by one and pretty soon, SeaWolf knew what straight was again.  With our problems solved we moved onto testing our vision bouy bumping code.

Because of the lighting in the pool, the orange bouys were showing up white, not something we were prepared to deal with, however due to Micheal and Jeffery's hard work on vision and interesintg "find the closest thing to what color we're looking for" code the red on my swim trunks quickly became a suitable target.  Torro, torro, torro!.  After some minor corrections we were quickly heading the right direction and with good time.

After all of Chris's contributions for the day he took the chance to grab some sleep while our vision guys were hard at work, but once they were done it was time to mix our "go straight" and "find the gate" code.  After waking Chris we attempted to re-test the "go straight" code with scary results, again seawolf was lost, and going in circles.  Frustrated, cold from being in the water and beat Kevin and I hopped into the hot tub to relax for a few minutes.  I was quickly requested back in the pool, and in no time, seawolf was once again on the right track.

So here we are, back at transdec, with our practice run coming in less than an hour.  We're currently mixing the vision and go straight code hoping for the best results.  Wish us luck, and we'll be back shortly!