Operations Manual

Operations Manual, rev. 11/21/19

Pre-Water Checklist

• Are all plugs connected and filled?
• Have the tubes been checked for air-tightness?
• Is your ballast set up?
• If you need a remote station, is the cable set up?
• Do you have the key with you?

Standard Pre-Deploy Operations

Final Assembly

1. Attach battery beaks and check voltage warning (see here). Ensure that batteries 1-2 are in control tube and 3-4 are in Jetson tube.
2. Attach batteries to PDBs, via the XT90 parallel connectors, in both tubes.
3. Check internal connections (last chance). It might not be a bad idea to boot and test connectivity and systems at this point.
4. Attach and tighten all plugs and penetrators. Check any re-atttached plug or-rings for issues.
5. Wipe down and check end gasket O-Ring seals. Re-grease if necessary.
6. Check tube airtightness by evacuating the tubes with a vacuum pump, down to (FILL IN) vacuum.
7. In the meantime, attach T100 motors to the structure assembly. Use a screwdriver and socket wrench.
8. Boot, check connectivity, and go wild!

Powering Up and Expected Boot Up Sequence

To power on the robot, take the magnetic key and press it against the left (control) tube, at the location of the reed switch (a small black 3D printed part, on the exterior just ahead of the Pi/Pixhawk. Hold it against the tube only briefly, then move it away. Use a sort of slow "stabbing" motion, and do the same to turn it off.

Once the robot has been booted, expect these things to happen:

• The Pixhawk will beep. (Description)
• The ESC's will beep. (Description)
• The Pi power light will come on, as will the power lights on the PDB's.
• The Pi ACT light will blink green.
• The Pixhawk light will first flash yellow, then blue. Once the blue light becomes a solid blue light, you should be ready to go, with motors armed.

During this whole process, if you are connected by Ethernet, you will see connect and disconnect messages several times. This is normal.

Connecting To The Pi

The raspberry pi can be reached at pi@10.42.0.231 (probably). The password is known by Mike, Hunter, and Corey. Simply ssh in, and if you aren't sure, you can always ping the IP. If the IP doesn't seem to be correct, run ./get_pi_ip.sh (which can be found in the root minibot repo for now).

Remote Control

To do remote control, make sure that your laptop is connected via Ethernet to the robot, then connect a wired Logitech controller to your laptop. Simply run rosrun joy joy_node, and you will be able to use the controller.

Control scheme:

• Right analog stick: Forward is forward throttle, backward is reverse throttle.
• Left analog stick: Forward is up, backward is down.
• Left analog stick: Left is turn left, right is turn right.

Packing

You need:

• The robot.
• Battery beaks x2
• XT90 parallel connectors x2
• Batteries x4 (in LiPO Guard Bag)
• Nut and bolt assemblies x4.
• Silicone grease.
• Plug wrench
• Phillips and flathead screwdrivers (large)
• Socket wrench set (You really only need socket, extender, 11mm).
• Ethernet cable (if doing remote connection)
• USB-Ethernet adaptor (if your laptop doesn't have an ethernet port).
• Laptop and charger. (if doing remote connection, ideally the XPS known as rohu).
• The Key.

Charging

For charging instructions, see here.

READ THE ACTUAL PAGE BEFORE CHARGING, USE THIS CHEAT SHEET FOR LATER

1. Confirm that batteries are all the same cell number (3s), and that each cell is no more than .1V off from the others using a battery beak.
2. Make sure the charger is powered off.
3. Plug the banana cables from Paraboard to charger.
4. Plug the balance cable into the paraboard, then the charger.
5. Power on the charger.
6. Working 1 battery at a time, plug a discharge cable into an XT90 on the Paraboard, then a balance cable to the 3S port next to the XT90. DO NOT REVERSE THIS.
7. Confirm the options are correct. Make sure that 11.1V(3S) is selected, and that the charging amps are no more than 2amps/battery. So (2 amps for 1 battery, 4 amps for 2, and 8 amps for 4).
8. Hold Start, wait for the battery check, then press start again.
9. Charge until 12.6V, no higher. Check voltages with battery beak.

Post-Sortie Operations.

1. Remove any necessary data if that is desired at that point.
2. Power off the robot with the key.
3. Remove the robot from the water and rinse thoroughly with fresh water. Really, very, very thoroughly.
4. Dry the robot off, taking care to avoid smudging the front face of the robot, where the cameras are.
5. Release the vents (except some level of air entering, depending on the level of vacuum you achieved.
6. Transport back to storage. If the trip is long enough, remove battery beaks and unplug the batteries. Batteries should not be stored in the robot.

Troubleshooting

• If the pixhawk fails to enter its final state or you have connectivity issues, check that the IPs are set correctly. This should be fixed in the future by setting some static IPs, but the IP for the pi should be something like 10.42.0.231, and the laptop should be 10.42.0.1. Make sure that both computer's /etc/hosts files, the laptop's bashrc ROS config, and the pi's /usr/local/bin/pixhawk_start.sh all agree on what subnet things are on.

• If you start up the pi, and after the first little while get no blinking on the ACT light (the green one next to the solid red power light), you might have a corrupted microSD. Reimage your MicroSD and try again (to confirm, check for a rainbow screen when plugging in an HDMI)

• Wireless controllers do not work with the current version of the teleoperation node, pycontroller. Use the blue wired controller. This has to do with the number of axes sent from the control sticks for different versions of the controller.