Night Testing: Camera Tests

At our second night at UNH, we planned ahead and bought plenty of food before the stores all closed. It helped keep us awake to take food breaks throughout the night, but we all took periodic naps when we could.


Although the camera driver and strobe system worked, the images were a little too bright (and slightly out of focus, even at long distances). We will have to adjust the focus and the aperture before doing any survey work.


At dawn, we packed up and left.

Night Testing at UNH

To tune up our new camera and flash system, we planned to take a trip up to UNH to use the large pool at their Ocean Engineering facility.

They were already booked for the week we wanted. But because we had a fairly urgent need to get our testing done, they agreed to let us use the pool "from 7pm until dawn". Time for some all-nighters! We loaded up the truck in the afternoon instead of the evening.


The UNH facility is more than large enough for our needs. It would be great to have access to a crane like this at a pier somewhere... or in our lab, or in an MIT pool facility.


It really makes testing more productive when you can get the vehicle in and out of the water quickly!

Our major accomplishment for the day (night) was getting the PID gains tuned for depth/altitude control. They are tight to within 1cm of the target altitude!


The one nice thing about working at night is that you can turn off the lights to see how effectively the strobe system illuminates the bottom.