Crazy busy day! Spoiler Alert: We got our base sensor clusters done! Ok, so back to the start. We spent most of Wednesday disassembling our test clusters. Today we were focused on getting everything properly attached to our printed circuit boards (PCB) which took some doing.
Think of it as playing a game that is half putting together a complicated puzzle with tiny pieces and half Operation but with out the convenient buzzer to let you know you screwed something up.We managed to get everything tacked down on the boards in the morning... and then spent the rest of the afternoon trouble shooting why they things weren't working. I will spare you the details because it was something different in each case but it tended to revolve around either messing up the polarity of a component or shorting a connection with solder that bled over with out you noticing. After we cleaned that up we managed to get both stamps on each board to light up.
This was a major success but we weren't done yet. We plugged them all in and ran down the hall to the other lab to check our receiver unit. Sure enough, there were our data strings separated by sensor number just like we hoped! It was a good day.
We aren't done yet, though. What we have done so far is make a set of four sensor clusters that are identical in function to what we designed last year and networked them together. That is great, but not the final goal. Next we are going to work on creating a control system to manipulate water level based on feedback from an ultrasonic sensor and/or alarms based on temperature, pH and DO readings. The basic idea is that if water level is too low add water. If water level is too high bleed of water. If pH, DO or temperature alarms go off then you would flush part of the tank by bleeding off and adding water at the same time. We will keep you posted on how that works out.
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