​A JOURNEY THROUGH GRADUATE SCHOOL AND THE KELP FORESTS  OF THE EASTERN PACIFIC OCEAN
  • Home
  • Videos
  • Gallery
  • Explore
    • Curriculum Vitae
    • Common Word Challenge
    • Contact
The synergy of science, communication and exploration

Project Pegasus Part 10: Rebuild Remix

3/6/2018

0 Comments

 
PictureMaddy, Lorenzo, and Jordan rebuild the new DB25 endcap
3/6/2018
San Diego, CA

​Project Pegasus has been a roller coaster of a ride since its inception last Spring (2017). After a long hiatus, we’re finally able to make the necessary repairs to get Pegasus back in the water. After a lot of head scratching and troubleshooting, we finally realized that the DB25 connector was fried. There about 25 different wires that provide power and information to Pegasus; think of the DB25 as the place where your skull meets your spine. One end of the DB25 is fixed in an “endcap” which seals off the e-chassis from the outside environment. The wires pass through the endcap and are dispersed across the body of Pegasus. The other end of the DB25 connector is mounted to the e-chassis, which is essentially Pegasus’s brain. All systems looked good after we rebuilt the starboard battery tube and controller board, but still Pegasus wasn’t turning on. Power simply wasn’t getting from the battery tubes to the e-chassis. It’s going to take us a little while to rewire Pegasus, which is easier said than done. Here’s Jordan had to say about our pre-rewiring prep:

Picture
Solvent welding can by sticky business!
Picture
Maddy carefully applies solder the tops of the batteries
​“The ROV and our team have been through a lot over the past year or so. It was sad to see that our DB25 pin, which controls where all the power from the batteries go, was fried. This means that we will need to essentially rewire the majority of the ROV. It is OK though because soldering is one of the most interesting parts of the build! Wire management is also a big concern for our team. We debated over the best places to cut the wires in order to ensure the best wire management as well as least amount of soldered connections. 
 
Today we had to look up some old instructions and rebuild the end cap with a new DB25 connector that we got from OpenROV®. We had to revert back to solvent welding with the dropper that is slightly to wide to allow the liquid to drip slowly. We were able to solvent weld the pieces of plastic together and epoxy the DB25 connector in the end cap, in order to waterproof this portion.
 
After about 2 1/2 hours of work we realized that we had to wait at least another hour for the epoxy to dry before we could even start soldering the new joints, so we decided to save that for another day. We did, however, solder little pieces of solder onto the ends of the batteries so that they would stay in contact with each other in the battery tubes.”
 
Stay tuned! The team and I are meeting next week to rewire Pegasus and get it ready for its public debut at CMIL’s Marine Science Day!
 
Cheers,
 
-Baron von Urchin
Picture
Method in the madness: our team's "work station
Picture
Project Pegasus is about more than just building an ROV
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    ​Pike Spector is currently a Research Operations Specialist with Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary

    Click here for Pike's Github Repo! 

    Tweet @BaronvonUrchin
    for more phycology fun! 

    Curious about Pike's ( now completed) master's thesis? Check out the Common Word challenge! 

    Archives

    August 2022
    October 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    December 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Videos
  • Gallery
  • Explore
    • Curriculum Vitae
    • Common Word Challenge
    • Contact