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May 18, 2016
Today we printed the papers that go on the board, laminated them, and then put them on the board.

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May 19, 2016
Today we packed the SeaPerch and other materials we need.

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May 16, 2016
Today we got another pair of motors and de-soldered and re-soldered them so that we could use those on the robot. We tested the motors in a kiddy pool at school. Everything seemed to be in order.

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May 13 & 14, 2016
Today we went to the home of one our team members to use the pool to practice. Here we discovered that one of our motors was not spinning the way the other motors was spinning so we knew that we needed new ones.

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March 26, 2016
We arrived prepared for the Orbs finesse course, but when we got there we found out that last years' finesse course was being used. We had to make a last minute change to the robot in order for it to be able to do the old finesse challenge. We did not know how this would affect the buoyancy. Sure enough when the robot went in the water it pitched forward. However, we received 25/27 points in finesse and completed the obstacle course in 1.10 minutes. We got second in board and third overall.

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NATIONALS HERE WE COME!!!!

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February 26, 2016

We knew that the fuses for the Sea Perch controllers tended to always be the issue, as we had seen it happen before. We suspected that this was the problem so we opened our controller and switched out the fuse. This turned out to be the solution, just like we suspected.

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February 25, 2016

Today we packed and connected all of the motors to the controller. We also tested the controller but found our motors were not working. There was something wrong with the controller, but we did not figure it out that same day.

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February 18, 2016

The team had a group meeting in which the contents of the presentation board was discussed. It was determined there had to be sections for: objectives, research, budget, trial analysis, a conclusion, acknowledgements, and sources

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February 10, 2016

The team came up with three different designs as seen in the picture below. We also considered the idea of shrouds for the motors and cutting out the pipe to fit around the motors instead of attaching them normally in order to reduce frontal area.

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February 15, 2016

Today we finished soldering our controller. This consisted of soldering the tether cable jack and power source connecting to the battery, installed the fuse, and sealed the controller. The clips that connect the battery to the controller wire were also installed.

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February 11, 2016

The team decided to strip the white jacket off of the entire tether cable except for the first five feet. The brown pair wire has also been removed. The reason for this is to reduce the mass the robot drags. We also braided the remaining three pairs of wires to make the wire more streamline and easier for the robot to pull.

We also began soldering our remote today. We attached the fuse socket to the board and attached the buttons and switches.

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Designing and Prototyping Like Professionals!

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Designing and Prototyping Like Professionals!

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February 28, 2016

We had generally agreed as a team on the design of our robot so some of our members sat down and created a cardboard prototype as well as had a session to plan for our presentation board.

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February 29, 2016

We began building our ROV today. We cut out all of the pipes to the sizes based on the cardboard prototype. We had two special pieces made. The first was a 4-way connecter made from a cap and a t-connector because they do not sell the 4-ways we wanted. The second was the pipe that holds the forward/backward motors. There was a slot cut into the pipe to snugly fit the motors.

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March 1, 2016

Today was the first da of buoyancy testing. There will be many more occasions. We used A/C pipe covering because it is smaller, but still worked.

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March 3, 2016

It was decided today to make a major change to the ROV. Instead of having the basket for the balls on top of plane of the motors, it would be put under. Theoretically this would give us a more stable ROV as well as let the drivers see better where the targets were.

In the picture below our team members talk with one of our mentors about the change.

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March 4, 2016

On this day we conducted tests to find the appropriate amount of flotation. We placed the ROV inside of a large container and started experimenting with different amounts of flotation. The goal was to attain natural buoyancy. We also added weights (bolts on a zip tie) to counteract the floation and attempt neutrality. Success however was short lived as it will become apparent later on.

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March 7, 2016

We conducted an experiment to measure the volume of the robot. We placed a small bucket, big enough to fit the ROV, inside a larger bucket. Then we filled the smaller bucket to highest amount of water without spilling water over. We then place the ROV in the bucket, and the water that spilled into the larger bucket was the ROVs volume. Our best estimate is 726 mm.

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First Practice in a Real Pool...Things Did Not Go as Expected

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First Practice in a Real Pool...Things Did Not Go as Expected

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March 18, 2016

Before our Spring Break ended we made time to get all of the team together and go to a pool to practice with our robot. It was difficult to schedule around everyone's schedules, but we made it work. We expected our robot to work without any issues. We went to the pool expecting to only practice, not make modifications.

We were very wrong. At first our robot did not float at all, and the up/down motor could not bring it up. We began experimenting with the flotation after that. We got it relatively stable, but when we finally began moving in the water the robot did not correctly move. If it moved forward, it pitched down so much it did a front flip. If it moved backward, the robot turned on its back and then began floating up. WE TRIED EVERYTHING TO CHANGE THE ROBOT.

We added weights inside and outside the robot. Removed flotation and added it, even changed it from pool noodle foam to A/C foam tube. We at one point even turned the up/down motor upside down and changed the basket to carry the balls to the bottom of the robot instead of the top where it was. We spent four hours doing this, before we had to part ways.

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March 25, 2016

Today we traveled to the home of our of our mentors, Mr. Vladimir Lopez. We met up with all the other Sea Perch Teams from our school to have a practice at his home. The purpose of this practice was to finalize our robots and prepare for the presentation as our mentor did a dry run with us.

Below is video of the robot in action.

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March 21-March 24,2016

This is were we experimented with buoyancy. Our mentor blew up a kiddie pool in his classroom and filled it with water. There we tested what we thought would be our final robot. We consistently tried fixing it by adding and removing weight as well as flotation. The robot was not stable. After finding out that our second robot was not working, (and realizing we were running out of time) we decided to build the ROV from the Sea Perch manual, but just out of CPVC to still keep that speed and lightweight aspect. Then we experimented with the buoyancy of that robot by again adding and removing flotation and weight (bots of a zip tie). We were able to attain a relative neutral buoyancy.

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East Early College High School
220 N Milby St
Houston, TX
77003
713-847-4809

Mentors:
Sam Saenz
ssaenz3@houstonisd.org

Vladimir Lopez
vlopez3@houstonisd.org

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February 9, 2016

Today we researched the forces that affect ROVs. We used the internet as well as a textbook on underwater robots that one of our mentors had.
These are the most important forces: buoyancy, thrust, Archimedes Principle, lift, and weight.

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February 8, 2016

Today was our first meeting as a team. The purpose of today was to make sure that all of the team members were aware of this year's challenge and begin to dscuss what each member wanted to do.
http://www.seaperch.org/seaperch_challenge

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Design/Lead Construction/Presentation/Driver

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Lead Design/Construction/Presentation/Notebook

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Design/Construction/Presentation

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Design/Presentation/ Notebook

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Role: Design/Construction/Presentation/Notebook/Padlet Designer

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We are Sea Perch Team Neptune of East Early College High School. Our names are Adolfo Castillo, Tiffany Jacobo, Edna Olvera, Johan Martinez, and Flo Turcios. We are all juniors part of the Science, Oceanography, Aerospace, Robotics Club (SOAR) at our school. We entered this competition in order to explore STEM in underwater robotics. Sea Perch is a nationwide underwater ROV competition, sponsored by the NAVY.
The competition requires the design and creation of an ROV as well as a presentation board to have an interview with judges with.
This Padlet was created to document our journey as well as provide a place where we can share extra information not included in our display. We hope you enjoy.