Day 5: Data Woes, pt 1

The day began with a hitch when trying to get the BottleLogger to work with my personal computer. After giving up and moving on, the rest of the day was spent collecting data points with our pressure sensors submerged in water. Our first set up for the day led to unreliable data, so we went back to the drawing board and came up with this little beauty.

Look at this tall drink of water right here

I am confident  this "new" system limits environmental variables, and gives consistent measurements. Our sensors, however, disagree.

This is from the "old" system. The correct image to be placed in later.

After a few trials with this "new" system, our data does not match. Each one deviates further from the linear relationship we expect at different depths of the experiment. At this point, we're not sure what's causing this deviation, but our current speculation is that it is a variable unaccounted for with the sensors. Perhaps there's an air bubble involved, or maybe the sensors need to soak for awhile. We don't know. When we return to the project next week, we're going to have to spend our time diagnosing this.

On a positive note, the programming for the project is coming along nicely. I believe I nipped a memory leak in the bud before it became an issue, and we're ready to develop functions for controlling the water pump. On an abstract level, we're nearly ready to run our main experiment.

Here are some bonus photos of Ethan and me building our sensor testing vessel.