Crocus Bay Run Apr 27, 2015

 Note you can click the red dots above to get the status info at that time clock.

We took off the water break and programmed the boat to turn sideways to the wind instead when it is supposed to minimize drift, like during the night.   It is really turning 90 degrees to a line going to a point where it started this ParkBoat command.  We tested this today and it kind of worked.  It was doing this at the bottom left between clocks about 5000 and 7000 (300 seconds or 5 minutes).  But the wind drag on the back of the boat is much more than the front so it still has to use a lot of battery to stay sideways. The second boat, the orange one, will not have so much unbalanced drag.

It also did the ParkBoat between the first and second loop near the beach.   This was only for 1 minute or 3 of the 20 second status reports.  These would have been reports where motors were not on the full 200 clock ticks, so seem to be 13433, 13533.  This is out from the beach a ways after one loop.

The hope is that a more balanced boat will not need to use the motors too often to stay sideways to the wind and so be able to get through the night using minimal battery and still not drift too much.  Getting rid of the water break saves about 2 lbs, so it will be nice if we can get this to work reasonably well.

This time the phone was charging from the main battery and we set the developer option for the phone not to sleep as long as it was charging.  So it did not go off after 30 minutes like last time.  However, the bluetooth connection failed after 30 minutes, so instead of making the 90 degree corner like the first pass it drifted up and to the left.  Then we paddled out and towed it in and that is the line in the top right.

The boat has a measure of its own health.   It can tell if it is turning the way it wants to or going forward when it wants to.  As it drifted off course the health measure went negative.  We will probably change the software to reconnect to the bluetooth when its measure of health is negative.