The Girlscouts have decided to start a new campaign in which they spread Girlscout propaganda around Max’s workshop (and paint it on our car windows).
We put Scout on Brendan’s car to bring it to Nanaquaket pond for a bit of testing. We set a zigzag course of about two miles for Scout to follow.
We started at around 7 o’clock and ran Scout for about two hours. During this time we tested a number of its functions, including:
Point to point navigation
EEPROM write functions (so that Scout doesn’t forget what the next waypoint is if the battery runs flat)
“Backdown” sequence that reverses the motor for 30 seconds every few hours in attempts to shed weeds and other debris
Wireless command recognition and wireless data logging (this will be useful for our longer tests)
Steering sensitivity (we don’t want to be overcorrecting with the rudder.)
The tests went very well; we were able to collect some baseline information about power consumption and Scout’s handling. Our plan is to bring it to Cuttyhunk from Tiverton this weekend, to test the bugfixes that we made and give us enough time to test a few new features.
