Since last week we have been testing our Prototypes at the Rice Rec Center Pool.
In this Tuesday morning, we basicaly did the same iterative process. We have been working in some new ideas/improvements and moving forward with the ones that we want to our final prototype design.
All that were just possible because last Friday we worked hard to make our prototype be ready for testing. The main reason for that was the 4th of July (Monday), and we just have Tuesday/Thursday mornings to test at the Rec Pool, that’s why everything was ready on Friday . So that whay we just have to go straight to the Pool and test the Prototype.
On the 4th of July, I went to the Hermann Park to watch the fireworks. Was a great experience expending all the day celebrating the USA Independence Day. The SEED interns did a barbecue on the Sunday, day before, to show to the internacional students some of the ways they celebrate the 4th of July.
Tuesday morning was one of our testing morning. Basically we went to the pool, as usual, and tested the device that we prepared in the Friday before. We reached a point in our project that almost every day that we go to the pool, we have modifications/inprovements almost every time. These improvements are small details, but they will make all the difference in the end of the Project.
We followed our normal schedule and started testing the device. The point was to see potencial failure points and additional issues.
Our main “tool” was Zipties. They are pretty easy to word with, cheap, adjstable and they hold approximatelly 75lb each, which was very good for us. Helped a lot using zipties to make small adjustments and we learnt that “you can always fix things with zipties”.
In the end of the week, we finished our Higher Fidelity Prototype and its ready for testing next week. The tests will be based on our Constrains and Objective Criteria.
We had a good performance this week. Our group did a good job and important improvements.
I came up the idea of using a GoPro to take pictures and film under the water. That was really helpful for us to evaluate some issues and better show/explain to our advisors how the device works under the water level.
#goteamswimsupport
Rafael V. Lantmann