Author: Syenna Graham

Hello!

This week I took a beginner electronics class where we practiced soldering and splicing and learned how to handle wires, it was very enlightening. I must have solders lot of wires before knowing how to finally do it properly, and next week we are learning how to crimp wires.

I also learned how to make better smoothies (add sorbet, no ice/no watery fruits/try to stay away from adding milk/use juice from concentrate). Also how dog agilty competitions work.

Additionally, a Navy officer came to speak about the state of submarines. I learned they are primarily exist now to protect undersea cables.

Other than that I updated some push scripts, created a backup for the joybox controller with a rasp pi and a screen and helped with well testing. 

-Syenna

Hello!

This week I worked on datapods and went to a few talks giving by the MIT joint program students and scientists. I also went to the Woods Hole film festival, the movie the played was about trailerpark ownership in the US. Other than that I am still going to the beach everyday, eating seafood and going to the free aquarium to see the seals!

– Syenna

Hello!

I am in week 5 of my internship, i’m now just starting to get really comfortable with how the software processes work on the Sentry team and biking everywhere in Woods Hole!

This week I …

– Went to the Woods Hole aquarium 

– Went to Martha’s Vineyard

– Fixed a booting issue on a portable server

– Installed OS/software on a datapod (a computer that collects data on sentry while underwater) and verfied that it works well

– Learned about servo/encoder software at a Sentry engineering meeting 

– Got raging poison ivy!

Have a good week,

Syenna

Hello,

This week i’m completing troubleshooting tasks to get the some of the software components ready to go back out to sea.

Such as, fixing ethernet ports on one datapod (one of the computers that collects the data for Sentry when its underwater), installing operating systems on another datapod and fixing booting issues with a server.

– Syenna 🙂

Hello,

This is my first week in Woods Hole, at the Deep Submergence Laboratory! We are scheduled to spend the rest of the summer (and my time here) performing maintance tasks on Sentry.

Since i’m on the software team, I will be learning a lot about IT and networking while i’m here.

This week I will be helping with a decktest (the test you perform on the robot to make sure its performing as expected) and installing ubuntu and code repos on their new watchstation. 

I also joined the softball team and go to the beach everyday!

-Syenna 🙂

This is my second week on the ship! So far I have …

• Participated in decktests where you prepare the robot to start a dive.
• Participated in post processing of data from the dive.
• Created a MATLAB plot of the servos. 
• Worked with a trigger board.
• Helped fix a RAID.
• Looked at a lot of logs generated from crontab, and helped fix issues from those logs.
• Decorated sentry with electrical tape to look like a kracken.
• Shrunk cups on Jason.
• Saw whales, rattails, spider crabs, dolphins, seals, hydrothermal vent worms and lots of other animals.
• Learned how to navigate by the stars and use a sextant with the 3rd mate (Grace).
• Learned all about batheymetry mapping software from Dave from Mbari. 
• and made a lot of friends.

The work days are pretty long here, usually starting work at 8:00 and working until midnight, my watch shift was (18:00 – 24:00). But the food is buffet style and there are plenty of choices of drinks and snacks. 

Hello!

After travelling to Oregon, and preparing Sentry on the docked ship for Friday/Saturday, on Sunday we left to go explore the Axial volcano in the Juan de Fuca ridge. Here we will be gathering depth and pressure measurements to compare to measurements from a few years ago. This should teach the geophysicists more about how volcanos systems work and possibly give them a hint of when the axial volcano will explode. 

As I am writing, Sentry is in the water and we are tracking her with DVL (a device which uses the doppler effect to get our position from the boat). We are also tracking Sentry with Wifflenav which uses acoustics and shows us where Sentry is in relation to the ground. Wiffle nav is the most reliable way to track Sentry in the water. I am on watch while Sentry is in the water from 7pm-12.

I have also been checking logs and reporting any errors to Sentry’s software guy, reading about serial and udp communications and playing with a homemade trigger board.

-Syenna

Hey guys!

My name is Syenna and I am a junior in ocean engineering and computer science at Virginia Tech.

Ocean exploration is my dream job after reading 20,000 Leagues and then proceeding to obsess over deep sea fish and submarines since. 

Something rememberable about me for you all:

• I drag race submarines 
• I have a tortoise named thortoise

Looking forward to having you guys read along on my ocean robotics journey this summer.