So here I am, sleep deprived on my second day on Swain's Lake in Barrington NH. Today's events consisted of a 6 am wakeup (brutal compared to my accustomed, although admittedly lazy 11 am wakeups this summer) followed by an arrival at the University of New Ham`pshire Chase Ocean Engineering Laboratory at eight. Classes began abruptly, jumping right into Assembly/ Disassembly with PHD student Adam Skarke. Each module is stored in a separate case and assembled piece by piece. If one piece of information is to be taken from this lecture it's this- Respect the O. The O-Rings, however cheap and simple they seem, a cracked or dirty O-Ring can lead to a massive failure of the AUV.
The following talk was given by Val Schmidt on the "Nuts and Bolts" of the AUV. It detailed the purpose of each piece of the AUV. Finally Val outlined the Linux Commands needed to program the AUV. Needless to say- I have a lot to learn in the ways of Linux.
After a quick lunch break it was time for the final two lectures of the day. Stephanie lectured on how to manage mission planning using the Gavia Control Center. The program allows you to turn different sensors on and off, ( Ecopuck, Camera, Geoswath), upload maps for mission planning, set up mission lines and much more that I probably missed during the lecture. Finally Hillary lectured on processing and parsing the data from the AUV trials. Matlab and Python are used to graph and interpolate the data. From what I've heard about my summer project I'll be doing a lot of Matlab work once I arrive in Lewes…hope I took good notes.
The day concluded with some of the most delicious "Everything" pizza I've ever had back at the house and preparations for the next day. I'm excited to actually get to see the AUV in actions tomorrow out on the lake.
Until Tomorrow
Pat McLaughlin
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