Badgerloop in California: Day 6
Date: Wednesday, August 23 2017
As the day began it was crazy for us to reflect and realize that our trip is already halfway complete! In our time here we’ve made a lot of progress in completing the pod and have overcome obstacles ranging from fried electrical components to an air system redesign required after our safety meeting. All in all, we look forward to the three days ahead and look forward to the challenges that we must complete in those days.
After breakfast, the pod was rolled once again down Jack Northrop Avenue to SpaceX campus.
At SpaceX, we proceeded to complete a variety of tasks that needed to be done. Nathan worked on mounting brackets to the shell to attach it to the mechanical structure of the pod. Ryan and Tristan worked to verify that newly installed pressure sensor and corresponding microcontroller bus both worked well. Vaughn and Cooper worked on continuity checking the sensors and verified that the network connection between the pod and our dashboard* was operating properly. Although we made a lot of progress, we unfortunately did not have the pod in a state where we could complete any major tests at SpaceX today.
One task that was completed, likely long overdue, was to get an official weight of the pod. We weren’t provided any large, industrial scale to use so we bought 4 household bathroom scales from Target and put one under each wheel. Our final mass is around 240kg, slightly below our estimate. We were also told by SpaceX that we need to make an additional component for the pusher interface but we don’t expect that it will take more than a few hours to construct.
There were even more places to run to today. We’re very fortunate to have great relationships with a number of local businesses who are all interested in helping us out with the competition.

For dinner, the electrical team made a quick run to the Costco food court and returned Bulletproof shortly after so that they could get to work. Meanwhile, the mechanical team went to In n Out to inquire about the supposed “secret menu” they have.

Upon returning to Bulletproof, the braking team checked for air leaks within their system and epoxy the brake pads so that they are completely secured to the rest of the system. After the braking team finished up and a quick mechanical team pow wow, the mechanical team went back to the hotel to continue to work on documentation and plan for the tests left to be completed.
At this time, the electrical team had complete control of the pod, which is something they’ve been waiting on for quite some time because mechanical teams have always had that “one more thing” to take care of. Here, the guys could finish up determining analog scaling values for pressure readings as well as soldering on some replacement board resistors. They were also able to run a modified form of the functional test and debug some minor issues they ran into. While the electrical team was performing this test, Justin was hard at work finishing up our state diagram documentation that he and Vaughn had been working on. At the end of the night, everyone was back at the hotel by 12:30 AM which us all to get some sleep after multiple 15+ hour days of work.

Tomorrow, we hope to complete the official functional test** tomorrow and mechanical fit check***. Everything on the pod is looking promising and the team is ready for the final push towards this Sunday. Tomorrow will be critical towards our success so be sure to check back and see just how far we get!

- * The dashboard is a web page used to control the pod and receive data on the pods performance remotely via wifi. Created by our controls team, the dashboard allows us to power on and off all systems on the pod and determine various performance metrics including pod acceleration, pressure and temperature.
- ** The functional test involves testing the electrical system as if it were the final pod run. In order to pass this test, we must verify that our electrical system is able to control the pod remotely while also verifying that our data acquisition systems are fully operational.
- *** The mechanical fit test checks whether the bottom of our pod is correctly aligned with the I beam, which is the metal piece that on the bottom of the tube that our pod centers around. This is basically pushing the pod down a roughly 8 foot I beam to ensure that our stability and braking systems are properly spaced from the I beam and that the pod is naturally aligned to go straight.
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