We were delayed by an hour in getting to the pool due to issues with the pressure sensor, camera capsule, and tether. We moved the robot with the joystick; it behaved as expected given the updated nonlinear thrusters and controls code. We then tried to begin tuning Z PID, but couldn’t make much progress given limited time and issues with Foxglove and the pressure sensor.
Positives
- After making changes over winter break to nonlinear thrusters and new controls, both remain fully functional.
- No new mechanical or electrical issues.
- The bottom screws in the capsule were inserted only for alignment. In other words, the metal plate on top was the only thing holding the capsule down. This worked flawlessly.
- Pressure sensor values that are more than 0.05 different than the previous value are filtered out to prevent random spikes in Z position.
Issues
- The pressure sensor occasionally stops printing to serial, so we lose /sensors/depth. Same issue that we’ve had for several months now. It is likely due to issues with I2C.
- The middle tether ports don’t work. The tether port that was slated to be replaced by the fiber optics is the only currently functional port, which we used for today’s test.
- There are several bugs in the new task planning system.
- Robot is not level (buoyancy needs to be adjusted).
- Foxglove graphs cut out intermittently. This does not occur in Foxglove’s web version, and may be resolved by a PR recently merged into Foxglove’s GitHub repo, which will likely be included in a Foxglove release within the next two weeks.