ORCA Back in the Water: Second Pool Trials
ORCA's second in-water test: leak checks and movement scripts go smoothly until a misaligned Pixhawk and ZED 2i send the sub into the floor, and an overtightened kill switch lets water into the battery compartment.
Back in the Water
Today, we water-tested the sub again. We tested the sub for any leaks, along with scripts that tested the sub's movement, such as depth holding, forward movement, strafing, and more. When we put the sub into the water, there were no signs of leakage, which was great. A script that made the sub surge forward was run, but something unexpected happened: the sub moved downward and to the left, crashing into the ground. We hurriedly pulled the sub out of the water to check for any leaks, and to our dismay, there was some minor leakage in the battery compartment. Some of our members were dispatched to retrieve isopropyl alcohol, tissue paper, and a screwdriver kit to debug and find out how severe the damage was. We found that water had leaked into the kill switch, which made its light stop working; however, the kill switch still worked. The cause was the kill switch being screwed too tightly, so our precautionary measures ended up backfiring. The cause of the sub's movement going awry was the Pixhawk and ZED 2i stereo camera being misaligned. These two devices contain important position-tracking sensors, so if the sensors were misaligned, the sub would be misaligned as well.
Fixing the Leak
To fix this, we decided to first coat the kill switch in a layer of Gorilla epoxy and let it cure for about 12 hours. Once the first layer is roughly set, another layer of JB Weld epoxy will be added on top.
To fix the misaligned sensors, we are also printing a new electrical tray. The tray will house all our components, from the Jetson Orin Nano to the Pixhawk.
Next Steps
Hopefully, next time we are able to properly test our software code and not be held back by electrical and mechanical bugs.