CLOSED LOOP

HI!

Late at night we sit in Detkin lab, Team MetaKnight sat wondering why we did not graduate high school and then pursue successful rapping careers. While we were not just signed by Jay-Z, WE DONE DID FINALLY CLOSED THE LOOP.

Rewind 26 hours, we spend a wonderfully toxic night in Rodin waterproofing our magical box. The fumes were flowing from slimy, slimy Corrosion-X. To add to the stench, we diligently squeezing and smoothed all the little cracks in the shield with aquarium sealant after sneaking suspicions that the cause for the water attack early in the day was due to the 3D printer's approach to creating levels in the structure.

Boy oh boy, buttons were driving us mad. We tried many make-shift approaches to attempting to keep the buttons in place under the patch of swim cap material. Try as we did with aquarium sealant, q-tips, chop-sticks, and now chemically infused fingers, the little buttons that could, couldn't.

Recognizing the need for water data the next morning, we decided to control the device without the buttons and move forward for this iteration.

But before we threw our electroniques into the pool, of course we needed to put our second round of waterproofing to the test. Catherine strapped up with an empty smart paddle and made like a fish. After flipping her fins, we anxiously dried the outside of the paddle to see the results..... Only a few drops of water made their way into the paddle. This made us very excited as this was a major improvement from the day before.

Riding the high of our dry, we prayed to the Corrosion-X gods, put our board in a plastic bag as a final barrier for those few drops of water, and screwed the lid on tight.

Well, it could have been worse. After Catherine swam 4 good technique laps followed by 4 poor technique laps, we opened to paddle. This time, some H20 homies seemed to throw a party in the plastic bag. The mbed light was off, and we weren't invited to the party, so we were now upset for two reasons.

Mild panic ensued as we thought we ruined our parts. Catherine and Aadu did the magic testing, and it turns out the batteries were playing a practical joke on team MetaKnight. One of the batteries ran out of power. Our entire circuit survived the rain storm - Thank you Corrosion-X! However, sadly, the loss of power mean that we did not get to save the swim test data! :(

We took this moment to learn where we could improve our waterproofing. We emptied the shield and lowered the apparatus into the water. We watched bubbles leak from the seam on the shield, the gap between the shield and the base, and near the screws. NOTED.

6 Insomnia cookies and 2 milk jugs were all it took to get MetaKnights spirits back in shape as we rallied back to Detkin Lab. We hit a few bumps while some leads fell off, but we managed to wire up the vibrators to actuate with our code! We implemented an algorithm that computes and analyzes the combined acceleration to keep track of the strokes. When the swimmer slows down too much, the paddle will turn on a light for a second to remind the swimmer to speeeeed up!!! Its super exciting and fun to play with. Next step is to get another vibrator to attach on up.