Meet and Greet

Looking to join the fun? We are hosting a Meet and Greet as well as an informal Information Session tomorrow from 5:30pm-7pm at the High Bay. Enjoy some Jimmy John's and get to know our members and different CMSS groups.

For those of you who don't know where the High Bay is, it's in the bottom of Hamburg Hall near Newell-Simon. Below is a map with a dotted line from Forbes and Morewood to the High Bay.

Any alums in the area should definitely stop by!

Hope to see you there.

Back to Work

Welcome back everyone! Last Monday we held our first Exec meeting of the semester. While there's still quite a bit to be done, things really seem to be coming together. Over break, Paul bought a new lower unit for Hydra, something we are all excited about. It's a little banged up around the skeg, but nothing we can't fix.

New lower unit!

On the cell front, we will finally be able to buy them soon. After a failed lead that took us to a Chinese company, which would have sold us cells at an obscenely inexpensive price (child labor, perhaps?), it turns out that there's actually a good old American manufacturer willing to supply us with the necessary goods.

As for batteries, we're still puzzling over that one. To quote Dave, "There's no ideal battery for us, and the best we could have done was the old batteries we used to have...and we can't seem to find [that model] anymore." Turns out the old ones were bordering on explosive, which is just enough of a safety threat for Chemical Safety to wait several months before removing them from our workspace. Yeah. So anyway, we've found a battery "that will do," but it doesn't quite match what we had before, and purchasing 6 volt deep cycle battery would add an extra 100 lbs to the boat.

There are still some heavy-duty MechE things to be done, such as finishing thermal analysis and and deciding where to position a water inlet. In other words, we'd like to drill a hole in the boat. This could prove to be an issue in terms of the mechanical inspection; according to competition regulations we can't change the wetted surface, so we probably would not be able to plug and unplug the hole for different races.

If any alums are in town, stop by the High Bay and check out the shiny new finish on Hydra! The picture doesn't do it justice. You might want to grab someone with a key first, though -- some people just haul it through the window, but Paul is still shook up from that last time the cops questioned him...

How'd they get that so shiny!?

"It's okay, Paul. I'll keep a lookout while you climb out the window."

And for Carnegie Mellon students looking to get involved, look for us at the Activities Fair this Wednesday, 4:30-6:30 in Wiegand Gym.

Keep checking back for more updates!

Donate to CMSS

I hope that everyone is having a great break! Carnegie Mellon Solar Splash is looking forward to an exciting new semester and the 2010 competition.

If you haven't already, please consider donating to CMSS. Anything you can give will greatly assist us in purchasing the solar cells we need to build our custom solar panels for the 2010 competition (see preliminary design in earlier post).

Donations can be made by credit card or personal check. To donate by credit card, go to the Carnegie Mellon University Giving website (www.cmu.edu/giving) and select "Give Now" at the top of the screen. Select "Other" and write in the "Preferred Designation" as Carnegie Mellon Solar Splash.

Checks can be mailed to:

Carnegie Mellon University
P. O. Box 371525
Pittsburgh, PA 15251-7525

All donations are tax-deductible.

Thank you!

Design Review: New Solar Array

Anyone who knows anything about the solar panels we have been using (which includes just about everyone except the person writing this) is aware of the various problems that have come up in the past: the panels are made for houses and not boats, output is roughly half of what it should be, and it is difficult to add thermal cooling to something that has already been built.

The goal of the project presented at the design review last week is to equip the boat with a custom-fit solar array in time for the 2010 competition. The new array should be lighter, more efficient, and, it's worth noting, a probable shoe-in for the coveted design award. No team has ever brought this kind of thermal cooling project to competition. As charming as South Hampton was last year, squirting water on their boat each time it passed the dock, we think we can do better.

The team's design attempts to combine the "best of everything." It's kind of like a sandwich that allows water to be pumped through plastic channels, cooling strips of aluminum that will in turn cool the solar cells. Below are some images from the review:

Exploded view. Sandwich ingredients from top to bottom: cells, corrugated plastic (where water runs through) with aluminum strips, fiberglass, corrugated plastic (structural, no water), fiberglass. Yum.

Cell temperature versus time and distance from the origin (in the plastic channel). Note that this model is actually incorrect. The team explained that they repeatedly crashed SolidWorks when trying to complete the modeling, so they went back to flint and did it themselves in MatLab. Which may have been a mistake...but it will be fixed for the future!

Check out the kiva for a more detailed explanation. We'll keep you updated on the progress of this project and others in the weeks to come.

Diving In

Welcome to the first post of the Fall 2009 Carnegie Mellon Solar Splash Blog! Better late than never, eh? The semester has been fairly packed as we prepare for the coming spring. Our successes and, uh, misadventures at last spring's competition only left us craving more.

First on the list was assessing equipment and getting up to speed with the state of the boat. Of course, not everything needs to be brand-spanking, shiny new for the boat to float. Along with efforts to acquire new toys, we have been salvaging what we can of last year's equipment. Or, as some of our more zealous members like to put it, "harvesting goods...like little squirrels. I believe Mike's response to that was a nervous smile and, "Okay then...well that sounds creepy."

Everyone can agree on one thing, though--money. A whole lotta money. That's what we want. For the past several weeks, Solar Splash has been networking, grant proposal-ing, and padding out budgets in an effort to fund all of our exciting endeavors. This year we were awarded a combined $1250 from Carnegie Mellon's SURG office for all proposals submitted (all of which can be found on the Kiva). As always, we are also looking into a number of other funding sources. In fact, certain unnamed (...male) Solar Splash members recently took it upon themselves to flirt shamelessly with middle-aged millionaires in the hopes that one of them would drop a big, fat check on our boat. Way to take one for the team, guys!

Never ones to turn down a chance to meet new people, Solar Splash also made an appearance at this year's SWE High School Day. The task: "explain to high school girls how engineering helped us fulfill our dreams." The general consensus was to send Paul. However smooth he is with the ladies, though, a valiant dream-sharing effort was put forth by several members, including Riddhi, Dave, Morgan, and Robbie.

More to come in future posts! In the meantime, everyone is gearing up for tomorrow's Design Review. To any alums in the area: stop by PH 125B at 5pm tomorrow, offer your feedback, and relive your college days with some free food.

Day 5 - Final Sprint Rounds and the Ride Home

Yesterday marked the end of the Solar Splash 2009 competition, and the team has returned from a 16+ hour drive from Arkansas to Pittsburgh. By far the longest "day" of the competition, it all started as we set up the boat for the final two rounds of the Sprint event.
Meanwhile, we loaded the trailer so that we could make our post-competition egress as swift as possible.

Next, Robbie Wedler stepped into Mike's shoes by being the pilot for our 2nd round sprint heat against University of Northern Iowa. Unfortunately, we had a minor electrical glitch which set us back about 10 seconds in the race, for a total time of 51.54 seconds. Robbie still handled the boat well, as used the opportunity as a good learning experience for the upcoming 3rd heat.

We quickly learned our lesson, and were ready for our head to head 3rd round sprint heat against the University of North Florida. Luckily, we are able to give you a sneak preview of the race before our higher quality tape gets processed, so you can see the race in the video below:

Our final time was 40.47 seconds, leaving us with our top two times of 39.46 seconds from round 1, and 40.47 seconds from round 3.

Of course, it wouldn't be CMSS without some sort of exciting twist in the story.

It turns out that during that final 5 meters of the 300 meter race, our sprint lower unit was under such force that the fiberglass and PVC housing cracked, subsequently shearing the driveshaft.
We also sustained damage to our hull, but this damage will be easily repairable over the course of next year.

Overall, we did better across the board in all events compared with last year, so we are excited about that. The competition became much more fierce this year, so our standing dropped to 12th place out of 18 teams. However, we went away with three awards: the "Sportsmanship" Award, the "Design Achievement" award for outstanding system design and integration, and 3rd place in the Technical Report.

Updated: I've included some new pictures from Robbie's camera of the awards. Below is the whole team (plus lower unit) receiving our competition plaque.

David and I went up to receive the Design Achievement award:
We posed with the team from Southampton, UK when we both received the Sportsmanship award for helping the team from Monterrey.We are happy with our progress this year, and are excited about the awards we received.

Over the past few days we have seen some ups and downs. We have felt elation, devastation, exhaustion, and animation. Despite what we have been through, one thing remains certain. The experiences gained by all of our members over the year has made this year's competition a success. We have seen the fruits of our labor tested against some incredible competition, and as a result have seen what works and what doesn't work. The team had a great time in Arkansas, and have come out of the competition with not only new knowledge, but also new friends (the guys from Monterrey are absolutely awesome).

We will carry the lessons learned throughout this year into the next year. Thanks to the help of sponsorship by National Instruments, 3M, the Steinbrenner Institute, and RE Squared, as well as support from donations by family and friends, we are able to endow next year's team with the capital and financial resources they need to continue our team's development.

A Farewell
It has been an honor to serve as the leader of such a talented and motivated team of students for the past year. When I see how far we have come over the past year, it truly pains me to think that, given my graduation, I now have to leave most of it behind. I have complete faith that Mike Barako and David Bromberg will do an even better job than I at taking this organization to heights we have never seen before. My personal goal for this year was to leave the organization in a better situation than what was given to me. Thanks to the fanastic team of people who have worked on this boat over the year, as well as the truly transformative potential that Mike and David now possess, I can confidently say that I have achieved this goal.

Although I have said it time and time again, I still believe that at Carnegie Mellon Solar Splash, we do not build boats, we build people.

When I look back on how I have changed as a result of CMSS, I have come to realize that it indeed was the people, and not the boat, that were responsible for building me. Working with each and every one of our team members has been an experience worth more than I can ever repay. I wish the team the best of luck in the following years (although I know they won't need it), and look forward to hearing about your progress for years to come.

- Mark
CMSS Ex-President 08-09

Day 4 - Endurance

The endurance event marks one of the pinnacles of the competition, and stays true to its namesake. Today tested the endurance of both Hydra and the crew, with over 4 hours on the water in the grueling sun. We started off by setting up Robbie Wedler for the first heat:

Over the next 2 hours we completed circuits around a circular course along with all other teams. We completed around 11.5 laps over the two hour period.

(Image courtesy of Scott Miller http://sjmpix.zenfolio.com/p604091457)

Fortunately the team from Monterrey finally got on the water and did one exhibition lap to show off their boat.

(Image courtesy of Scott Miller http://sjmpix.zenfolio.com/p604091457)

Another cool boat was the rookie team from Southampton, UK seen below.

(Image courtesy of Scott Miller http://sjmpix.zenfolio.com/p604091457)

After the first heat, we quickly scrambled to use our charge controller to charge up one of our batteries to be used in the 2nd heat.

At 1:30 we got into the water for the second heat, with Riddhi as pilot.
We competed again for 2 hours, and finished with a similar length of 10.75 laps.
Both heats gave us times that were better than last year, so the new hull offered some potential improvements in endurance. Preliminary team analysis after the event indicated that the primary limiters on performance were the 4-year old batteries and the selected propeller.

After the race, we set up the boat for the Sprint event tomorrow, then headed back to the hotel to refresh after a long day in and around the water. The team is looking forward to tomorrow, where we will go through some elimination sprint rounds before our final heats. The end of tomorrow will be the awards ceremony, where our final standing will be revealed, along with any other awards we may get. Unfortunately, immediately after the competition we will be hopping in the van to head back to Pittsburgh, so I may not get the chance to update this until midday Monday, but I promise to get you the results of the competition (along with some new pictures) as soon as they become available.
- Mark