Maddie Status Report (3/15/25)

This week has definitely been a bit slower than I intended. I’ve faced some issues with parts being ordered/delivered, which has slowed progress on working on the Z-direction movement. That being said, I have constructed a makeshift spool which should allow for us to still test this movement generally this week, allowing us to still meet our goal of having a mini/pre-MVP integration product by Wednesday.

Additionally regarding the Z-direction movement, I pivoted the design of this system a bit this week, meaning that the 3D print has been (intentionally) not sent to Techspark yet. I was originally planning on constructing a level-wind / spool mechanism system for the cable to be guided by. After receiving the cable, though, I have realized that it is a bit more rigid width-wise than I anticipated. Because of this, I am no longer sure about being able to angle the cable on a spool while still making sure it lays flat, especially once it has casing on it (which hadn’t arrived as of Wednesday). 

I’ve pivoted to designing a spool which nicely coils the cable over itself, effectively winding it in an area that’s exactly as wide as the cable+casing. This poses a tradeoff in that the diameter of the spool would need to be larger as a result of it being far more narrow, affecting the distribution of weight, and therefore balance and buoyancy, of the boat. I am planning on creating a prototype of this before finalizing the size and print, to ensure that it fits our needs; the finalized design (or at least design direction, in the unlikely event that neither of the current two options are viable) will be determined by Wednesday the 19th.

In addition to working on redeveloping this portion of the project, I have spent some time this week writing a program that, given a video panning left to right, can extract still images that are able to be recombined, effectively creating a panoramic image out of a video. I am currently working on generalizing this program so that it is able to take a video which pans back and forth, break it into single-direction stretches, and do the same process for each section. 

Lastly, our stepper motor and driver haven’t come in yet, so I haven’t been able to test the Z-direction code yet, but I have created an updated version of it that is able to display more accurately the depth of the end of the cable based on the proposed new Z-direction design. If we end up making the pivot being proof-of-concept validated this week, the stepper code will have already been updated to accommodate it.