Sonar Bugs Fixed!

We have been having problems during our first scans with intermittent sonar performance. The sonar would frequently hang or pause, often corrupting our captures or disrupting a scan. After we returned from today's sites, Brent, Erik, and I layed out all of our cables and parts in an attempt to isolate the problem. We very quickly singled in on a software mis-configuration; the SeaSprite sonar scan software was expecting data on a different COM port than the hard-wired COM1 on the back of the laptop. We suspect that the optical RS485 converter was still getting the communication close enough, but would occasionally drop packets, causing the intermittent sonar.

Regardless of the cause, after setting the configuration to COM1 we were able to successfully capture reliable sonar data. We tested the configuration with all of our spare parts as well, to confirm that we had no broken or mis-configured components. Once everything had been confirmed working, we packed up the robot and control cases with a full set of parts, then packed up all the extras in the second control box. Tomorrow should bring us data much easier and much more quickly; this fix is a huge sigh of relief to all of us!