Check the Spam

 I have what might be called an on-again / off-again relationship with my spam folder. Some weeks things are a bit slow and I'll browse it for some cheap amusement to find out what lucrative business opportunities I'm missing, or what strange perversions against human decency I am being blackmailed for. Other times I'll go for weeks without checking it, only to find out that there was actually a valid email in there needing my response. This evening I discovered 3 emails from 8 to 12 days ago requesting my approval and confirmation to be part of a virtual maker fair in Shanghai China, that I had applied to shortly before that (http://www.makercarnival.org/). I did respond to them this evening, so hopefully that will be enough time before the fair starts on October 14. 

This week turned out to be a bit discouraging in terms of development work. I had been trying to 3-D print an enclosure for this solenoid valve: 

which could house a "dry" compartment for electronics, while maintaining a separate enclosure for a water sample of about 200 ml. So far, no combination of solenoid valve, 3-D printed enclosure and other parts and o-rings has been sufficient to keep water out of the dry compartment. And no we're not talking about 100 m of water pressure or anything. We're talking about leaking under kitchen sink pressure conditions. Granted it is a pretty slow leak, but still. I was hoping for better. Some sort of new approach is required for this I think.

On Saturday I took AMOS out to Kelly's Creek for what I hoped would be a long test and leisurely paddle. Nope. A wire got snagged on a stump right at the start and then AMOS made the beeping noise that it makes whenever it reboots. Only it hadn't rebooted properly, and I couldn't get it to startup at all after that. After taking it home and examining it, I was able to fix a wire that had come loose in the battery box. The following day I brought AMOS back to the same spot, but this time it weaved back and forth in a strange manner, as though the compass was not properly calibrated:

The next day I tested the compass out and it seemed fine, but today when I was running the propeller in the backyard, I happened to notice that I was getting a bunch of I2C errors on everything (including the compass) whenever the propeller was run at high speed. The battery box is now a terrible mess of wires and neglect and I really need to clean it up before I can begin to guess at what might be wrong. I was able to nervously open the box with the propeller spinning at max speed and measure the +5 V supply and it seemed OK, but possibly there is a transient problem with the supply when the propeller goes to max speed. Because the I2C problems persist even after the propeller has been stopped. 

Always something to work on!