Steady Progress
Team update
Phase 2: Off-Season Training
Sprint 3, November 8— December 6
Note: this sprint was especially long because we had a week-long break in the middle of it for Thanksgiving and it was better to maintain momentum than to break up work time with a sprint review.
The overall goal of this sprint was to test Damn Yankee and start researching and CADing the H-Boat. We still have yet to get the boat into the water but the boat is ready and we plan to do that early on in sprint 4. Additionally, we have dived right into researching boat design topics for our next boat and hopefully we will be ready to make some decisions based off of this work in the following sprint.
Since the mechanical subteam was able to waterproof and finalize Damn Yankee for testing in the last sprint, they are now ready to test. Unfortunately they were not able to find an opportunity to get the boat into the water this sprint, but that was an obstacle out of their control. The mechanical subteam has mostly been focused on research for the H-Boat design. Within this subteam, they have broken themselves into research mini-subteams, each of which are assigned to essential parts of the new boat. They have yet to come to any decisions but are contemplating the number of hulls that would be ideal and the kind of sail that would work best for what we are trying to accomplish.
The electrical subteam was able to get the Airmar working which was definitely a great accomplishment. They were using an Airmar from a previous year and various cords that were not clearly labeled. After many persistent attempts and some research, they were able to figure out the right configuration of the connectors and get the Airmar to turn on and deliver a signal. The subteam now has a few additional members and hopefully will be growing as the team transitions to the H-Boat. The software subteam gained confidence with ROS and were able to locate the Airmar code. Thanksgiving break interrupted their meeting schedule, slowing down some progress but they are still working and trying to figure out the GPS.
As a team, we decided on boat names. The G-Boat will be named Git Boat and Hawsepiper will be the H-Boat. We are in a pretty good place and seem to be on track. Hopefully we will get to test the boat in water before winter break begins because that would answer some lingering questions about our progress so far and help determine next steps. This would be extremely useful as we are preparing for break and will be assigning tasks for members to tackle so that we stay on track. For the next sprint, we will be making decisions about the H-Boat design and hopefully start CADing the boat.
~ Anna Griffin (Mechanical subteam)
