Wiring the power supply, stripping the underwater cam

6V battery with connectors Bought cables, plugs, and sockets for connecting the compass and LCD modules to the Basic Stamp, and engine controllers and got knows what to the lead acid batteries. Bought some more plugs for charging the batteries with my ancient Robbe charger, which with 500mA is "slightly" underpowered for the job.

Tried to solder together five plugs with a 75W iron to make a multi terminal connection, and ended up with a smoking lump of solder and metal that went into the trash. Tried again with some wire, and got two six-enders for connecting to the 6V battery. Took me two hours, for chrissake!

Engine power controllers Put some plugs on a bow thruster engine and one of the small controllers (Robbe 50uP), rigged up the whole thing with battery and the servo controller, and - voila! - it works. The controller does a really good job with low power setting; the propeller starts turning very gently. I feel relieved, too, that the controller works like a charm with the servo controller.

At the model shop (Baatz at Münster) I bought two servo cable extensions for the cam turret, two brass sprockets for constructing a 1:4 servo gear (this will be the answer to "how do you get 360° ultrasound sensor rotation from a 90° rotation servo"), a 5mm shaft, and a engine/shaft coupling at Baatz.

Disassembled the Logitech web cam, which consists of a base (empty, apart from a brass weight!) and a swiveling head. The board is bigger than that of the Creative cam, but mounting is easier because it's not being held from the side but it has two decent mounting holes through the board. After removing the casing the cam is way smaller than before, and can be mounted directly above the plexiglas window.

Assembled the main propulsion system and mused about how long the shaft has to be to prevent water from leaking in. Background: grease in the shaft prevents water from pushing in. What concerns me is the length the shaft musthave: if I cut it too short the resistance from the grease might not be high enough.

Since I want the aft thruster far back and the main engine needs to be the last item on board, the shaft has to be very short. But, hey, I've got another idea: I mount the thruster engine off center (should not make a big difference), mount the thruster as the last thing, and use a medium length shaft to cross over the thruster tube. Sounds like a plan!

Fiddled a bit with the cam turret (shortened shafts). Drilled holes for cables, and put some grease on the main hub. Since I had no wires for connecting servo power I could not try out the result.