Wiring Day!

Sunday was wiring day and we got a lot done, though ran into a number of problems. We were unable to do the testing we wanted because it took a lot longer to install of the wires and connectors than we expected. Chris and Mark got the dashboard built, and it looks a lot better. The module boxes that they built look a lot better as well, and will definently be more reliable than what we once had. I worked on some of the connectors, and they are a lot harder to deal with than they should be. Quite annoying. We got them all done, except for one of the boxes, which we ran out of pins that we're going to have to order. Problems, but that's why we plan in a lot of leeway.

I wrote up a perl program to write low-level test code (commands for the ethernuts) so that we can test the workings of the hardware and associated communication stuff. As long as that turns out well (Darren worked out some kinks on Sunday), we'll be set to plug in the computer and drive, assuming StepperCalculator, VehicleHandler and Harware Interface work out, which they should. More code reviews concerning those this week.

Tay and I also went over what computers we're going to ask for at the meeting tomorrow with the donations coordinator for GCCIS. The initial estimate of $12k worth of computers (Dual 3.6GHz Xeon with 2GB of ram was our vision machine) was much more than we need. From testing, we've found that our algorithms aren't all that intense and run well-enough on Tay's 2.5GHz Athlon 64. The computers we're looking to get are two 2.6GHz machines, each with 512MB of ram. Meager by comparison (Dell's lowest priced machines) but should be OK for all of our testing. Two of those work out to around $1k, still much less than most of the other GC teams. Once again, we undercut the competition!

Hours: 8