Week 2 Day 3

This morning was a lot of effort for very little gain. We spent the first chunk of the day testing what we built yesterday and making sure the calibration was still good. Then we tested the probes all in one bowl of water. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work. All of the sensors use voltage to take their readings and, even when you aren't actually reading, the voltage stays on. So... when you have a probe that depends on a voltage reading next to a separate voltage source the inevitable happens. Bad readings.

We spent the next couple of hours dissassembling what we built yesterday so that we could reuse the circuit stamps for the pH and DO and stripping the thermistor off the old circuit so we could use it as well. No money for more probes and no time to wait for them!

Once we had everything we needed of the old boards we started laying out the new circuits, complete with the hardware switching to make sure we aren't dumping extra voltage into the water.

We took a break and went down to the library to do some more research for our paper and discussed what it was we were really going to write about. It is difficult to explain that you are building a model of a model of a stream. Model inception! So, what are some real world applications? Aside from actual stream monitoring, what about monitoring fish farms!

Eventually we rolled back up to the lab and started soldering up a storm to get more done. We aren't finished yet but we are on track to have all of our sensor clusters operational by the lunch break tomorrow!