Day 19

Today I started out the day by cutting an Ethernet cable in half and soldering all of the connections back together to practice for shortening the cable. We need the cable shortened so that it will fit inside the case more easily. Soldering those eight individual connections is a bit tricky, but by doing this practice I came up with a good system for connecting the Ethernet cable wires. Then at 11 the whole Intern group went on a bike ride over to the University of Rochester and Mount Hope Cemetery. We saw the graves of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. It is a stark reminder of the sexism of the era that Douglass has two large grave stones and markers leading people to where his grave is, where as Susan B. Anthony has a small grave stone near her family members of which the males have much larger graves. After lunch we rode back to RIT and then I shortened the Ethernet cable and tested it and it worked!

Day 18

Today the search for a new step up converter continued. Searching for the step up converter was tricky because everything that we found yesterday and during the first hour today had some problem with it. Some were to weak, a lot of them were step down converters because it is a much more likely problem to have to need to step down than step up the voltage. There were only a few that we found that would work but they were on shady websites and would be shipped from China and likely not be here in an adequately short amount of time. But I found one this morning that will work perfectly and ships in two days so we ordered that. I also experimented with the possibility of working around the software challenge of getting the two cameras to take the pictures at the same time with hardware. The capture button is on the display screen module and tells one Pi to take a picture through the GPIO pins and then that Pi is supposed to communicate with the second Pi and sync when the two pictures are taken. However I talked to David about, and then experimented with the possibility of running wires from the button to the second Pi so that when the button was pushed it would send the signal to both of the Pis.

day 17

Today with the new battery charged and ready for testing, I plugged everything together and miraculously it worked! However when I attempted to repeat this success, the system overloaded the step up converter and it promptly fried. After consulting Dr. Bob Kremens and looking up a few specifications for parts, we realized that this was because the step up converter we were using was rated up to 200 Milliamps and we were trying to push 1.4 amps through it. So once we had a battery capable of doing this it fried the step up converter. Now the search for a new converter begins. It is a frustrating search because everything is either the wrong part or has some other problem. There is still hope however.

Day 16

Today the new battery arrived! I immediately got it charging and then planned how I am going to put the power delivery system back together as I took it apart to hook up the main electricals to the external power. I also researched D-bus because we may use it to sync when the pi cams will take the two that make up the anaglyph. Tomorrow, I have a lot to do with the power delivery system and make sure the new battery will work. All the stats say that it should do quite nicely but I won't know for sure until I test it tomorrow.

Day 15 - end if week three

Today I tinkered with the raspberry pi setup some more because the power supply had been heating up the step up converter yesterday. After hooking up the power supply in several spots with alligator clips, I realize that this was because I was pumping 5 volts into the step up converter meant convert from 3.7 volts to 5 volts. After I figured this out I hooked up the power supply above the step up converter and made sure the pis were working more than just powering up. After finding out they did, my day ended early when I had to the college and careers event at rit. Which I recommend to anyone who is even thinking about going to RIT.

Day 14

Today we set up a model of most of the internal electronics of the camera using an external power source. The external power source we used was a variable power output unit. We dialed it in to 5 volts and both of the pis and the display screen worked perfectly. I also figured out how a step up converter works. It raises the voltage and lowers the current of electricity to maintain constant power and raise the voltage. This explained why the old battery wasn't working properly, because after the step up conversion it was pumping just over 1 amps of electricity. This is how the new battery is different from the old one. Theoretically it should have a maximum amperage of 4.6 or so amps after the step up conversion.

Day 13

Today Professor Pow told me that the shipping on the replacement battery I selected was such that it probably would not arrive for a week and told me to look for something that we could get more easily. As a result I spent most of the day shopping online for a suitable replacement that was closer to home. What I found was that there are not that many suitable replacement to begin with and none that would get here more quickly. After learning this the hard way I told Professor Pow that we would just have to wait for the one I had picked out originally because it was the best replacement. After that I spent my time researching how to move files between the two Raspberry Pis.