I was called into the lab to handle a bit of an emergency. Will was
having trouble getting my OSMC code to work properly.

Before I got down to the business of debugging with him I examined the new
underwater camera that had finally arrived. It was pretty sweet.

The setup was pretty basic as usual.

The ROV has come a long way over the months. It's been quite an
adventure contributing code and working in the lab on and off.

Helping with the project also kept me on track with my
motor controller skill development.

I was confident that I could get the thing to work and get back
to my errands. ... Though it took a bit longer than I would have liked.
I designed my motor direction and speed control to work by turning
the knob left to go reverse and then right to go forward. Leaving the
knob in the middle would keep it stopped. The problem was that
it seemed to only either stop or go in one direction.

I drew out the idea more visually for us. It helps a lot for resolving
issues like this and I often enjoy conveying the idea with a clear picture.
You are looking down on the control knob. It's marked into
3 segments. When the knob is turned the motor's direction and
speed is controlled by it's position. I told Will that
we probably weren't seeing the other direction because it was out
of range for some reason. I drew a squiggly line to represent where
I thought the mark wasn't getting to. (Near MID B)

It took a bit but after some changes to the code and some new
values the thing was working somewhat well enough for me
to get on my way.

Will was lucky I was able to be there. It was a great little
moment to get it working after the fuss.

I remained calm throughout the endeavor of course.
I've learned patience over the years of careful debugging.
You will go mad if you can not be patience and logical.

I have to say that although I look much older in this picture...
(Dag Nabbit) I've enjoyed getting to come to a lab and work
with the engineers. (Well mostly Will) It's a welcomed shift from the software people.
And the coding is SO much more simple compared
to what I have to deal with on the average. It's a refreshing
change.

And it feels good to make stuff actually happen in the real
world.

Looks like he found a bunch of car batteries for the thing too.
That was my guess anyway.