Huddle Testing

June 15th, 2010

The two people from PASSCAL, Greg and Derry, came on Saturday night and we had to immediately begin setting up the first 25 of our sensors for the huddle test.  I learned how to connect the sensors, the DAS, the break-out box, the gps, the battery, and the power box and how to program it with the Clie.  We are using the electrical systems and technology (or something like that) building at Great Basin College.  We ran into some trouble when we realized that the gps wouldn't lock with the metal roof so we had to move all the equipment to just inside the garage door and run the gps cables underneath it.  It was a little extra lifting but in the end it worked out.  We connected everything and then went out to a GREAT dinner at a Basque restaurant (Elko has a lot of Basque restaurants which is strange).  It was awesome family style dining and we had so much food leftover that some people took home 2 whole steaks in little doggie bags to eat for breakfast.  After dinner it was 2 more hours of work to program all the DAS's. We had a slight set-back when we realized that all the Firmware had to be updated, but we ended up finishing around 11 PM.  

The next morning we came in, took out all the disks and checked the data to make sure each unit was recording and the data was consistent.  Everything looked good so we took down those 25 and set up the next 25.  This morning we checked them out and found one bad sensor that was showing consistent little 'pings' on the signal so we had to send for another one from Socorro.  We took everything down (by this time we had gotten pretty fast at it) and then went to lunch and then on an extreme shopping trip where we tested the limits of our Dodge.  We hauled about 75 bags of sand, then got 260 fence posts, 8 bales of barbedwire, and of course went on another trip to Home Depot (I have come to hate that place with a passion).  

The rest of the group got in this evening, mostly Stanford grads and a couple undergrads.  We went out for pizza and then on a giant Smith's excursion for food.  Tomorrow we go out as a group to two training sites so Derry and Greg can make sure we know what we're doing. Should be fun, but gotta get up bright and early!

Our more organized, huddle test #2.