Rolling with the Punches

The theme of this post is developing a Plan B when Plan A fails. We've hit a lot of walls in the past few days but we are determined to push through and create an awesome project whatever it takes. Over the weekend, we realized the hard way that soldering our components onto a solderable breadboard is simply not going to work. We burned out an mbed, one of our microSD card readers, and an accelerometer (Yes Aadu, I will unsolder the mbed). Fortunately, we had backup for all of the critical components. We realized that we're going to have to make do with the non-solderable breadboard. Space is becoming a point of concern on board and will definitely be a challenge when it comes time to add a vibrator, pressure sensor, and bluetooth chip.

Shield Base with breadboard

We adhered our silicon button lining and LEDs to the front panel with 100% silicon aquarium sealant and it dried nicely. Unfortunately, one of the LED leads snapped off this morning so we will need to re-attach one of the LEDs.

Inside of front panel

This afternoon, we did our first wet run without any of the circuitry inside to see how watertight the paddle was. We sealed the snap-fit cavity with waterproof putty and screwed the shield together very tightly. Unfortunately, as you can see below, the piece of paper we had inside got very wet. We identified the problem area on the shield lid and tonight we are reinforcing all the of the weak seams with aquarium sealant and we will try again at the pool tomorrow. Makerbots are not perfect and neither are we, but we're just going to have to roll with the punches. In the very worst case scenario, the shield will not be waterproof and we will have to demo a not-quite-water-safe product. :(

First wet run - Thank you for filming, Coach Dan!

First wet run failure

We've been doing a lot of land work to analyze collected acceleration curves. We have identified a common bad swimming habit that we can quantify and use to "close the loop" with an on-paddle vibration motor that will indicate to the athlete when his or her fingertips are not angled properly.

We are still waiting for our bluetooth chip and pressure sensor breakout to arrive. We will have to figure out the on-board space issue very soon. Final demo day is in four days and we are in panic mode. After 6-8 hours of work every day on this for the past four weeks, it would be a shame to see everything go down in flames at the last minute.