During the closing ceremony of the 2024 competition we sat down and started brain storming upgrades and revisions we wanted to make to your current ROV. This is a picture of the robotics board with the everything will well be trying to accomplish. 

We are getting close to the end; with the camera and light being mounted we are in the home stretch. Now its the tough part with wiring and waterproofing. No time to waste as we the end of the school year gets closer and we get ready for summer to begin.  

Today’s primary objective was finishing the servo wiring on the claw, which is responsible for opening and closing, as well as rotating 90 degrees in either direction.

During the process, we learned that a hard-wired kill switch is required—not a button on the controller. This switch must cut all power from the batteries to the ROV, meaning we had to relocate the power source. Initially, it was planned to sit inside the brain housing alongside other electronics, but it now needs to be stationed on land.

We also discovered that our controller wouldn’t function over Bluetooth. After researching how to hard-wire it, we needed to order additional parts. While next-day delivery from Amazon is convenient, it doesn't help when momentum is lost due to delays. We couldn’t source the parts locally for our original controller plan and had to pivot. The new setup involves running a USB-C cable from the controller to a laptop, which connects to the ROV’s Raspberry Pi via Ethernet.

While purchasing the Ethernet cable, we considered using a second Ethernet line to supply power to the sub. After consulting with a mentor team, we learned this wouldn’t work. We pivoted again, opting to modify a 50-foot heavy-duty extension cord for the power supply.

The controller setup still isn't plug-and-play. Itzjak has spent hours coding to get the system operational.

Unfortunately, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to back out of the competition this year. Despite putting in a tremendous amount of time and effort, we weren’t able to get our programming functioning as needed. The team worked hard and stayed committed throughout the process, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Things simply didn’t come together the way we had hoped.

As a result, we won’t be appearing on the live feed tonight.

That said, we’ve learned a great deal through this experience and now have a solid foundation to build on for next year. We’ve already compiled a list of improvements to tackle both our design and programming challenges moving forward.

Thank you for the support.