Rumpelstiltskin

My grad student, Kharis, braiding rope for a 
bridle to deploy equipment in the ocean.

"You know, if you had a male grad student, they would not know how to do this," my grad student observed smugly. She was draped in yellow rope, braiding with her hands and keeping the strands from tangling with her feet. She looked like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold. I smiled and shook my head. She was right - that level of scientific arts and crafts was distinctly female. 

In another corner of the lab, I had my own straw-based alchemy experiment going on. CATAIN's electronic entrails were sprawled out on the bench top, with cords of every imaginable kind attached to ports in the camera's Raspberry Pi computer. There was HDMI, ethernet, USB, a small white jumper, a 6-prong connector with 3 of the prongs purposefully removed, and little hook-shaped terminals that were way too delicate for my liking. If I may continue the Rumpelstiltskin metaphor, I was the princess, sitting amongst a pile of straw, desperately wishing it would turn into gold, but unable to live up to my father's preposterous lie. 

The Raspberry Pi computer with all of its cords

Fear not, friends, because just like the original, this fairy tale has a happy ending. It took me the better part of a day to work through the 11 pages of instructions I had received from the software engineer who originally designed it, but I was able to successfully re-program CATAIN. My mess of cords served its purpose. Kharis' braiding exercise also resulted in strong, reliable ropes. 

See if you can guess what we're preparing for. We've reprogrammed CATAIN to record images every 24 hours, which means the battery will last for a year. We've built a bridle to deploy it in the ocean. If you've ever read this blog before, you can probably sense that there's an expedition coming. I won't tell you where we're going just yet. Stay tuned!