Fri., Nov. 4th

The Senior Design students gave their Project Proposal presentation today.

Samad (EE guy) & the ME students proposed to distribute wired +12V power from the DE3 supply to the detectors via conduits above the ceiling tiles.  That sounds fine.  The coax signal cables (for phase 1) can also follow the conduits the other way, back to the central electronics unit.

There seems to be a disconnect with CLC regarding whether the detectors will be visible to the public - Reed wants to put them above the ceiling panels - but the whole point of locating them in the classroom to begin with is so that they would be visible to students - Ray and I need to talk to Reed and straighten this out.  Reed may not be aware of what the original agreement with CLC was.  Also, Reed wanted the detectors in only half of the classroom, but we need them to be spread out as far as possible to improve our angular resolution.  If they can't hang below the ceiling in one room, then they might as well be in different rooms from each other, or even farther apart, on opposite sides of the building, say!  

Brian Kirkland is coming by the lab on Monday to discuss the cooling system design (which needs some work), and the computer engineering students (including Aarmondas) are coming by on Tuesday to discuss next steps on the gelware, such as the new timing datapath and the performance optimizations.

Also on Monday, Ray and I may work on putting together the 3rd detector.  We have another long BNC-to-SMA 50-ohm coax, but we need another short 50-ohm BNC-to-BNC coax to go inside the gun case (same length as existing ones).  A new cable of the right length may still need to be ordered.

Turns out, according to Reed, there is an easy solution for the GPS antenna (run it along the same path as the connections to the roof solar panels), but we probably still need to order a new antenna with a longer antenna cable.  Need to contact DeLorme about this to see if we can order the new antenna cable through them, or if they can recommend a supplier of these.

I spoke with Michelle (director of CLC) this morning at the COE faculty meeting, and thanked her for her support, and apologized for missing Reed's replies to my earlier emails (which happened when my FAMU email was failing to be pulled by my gmail due to an outdated password).