Mission Element: Bouys- 9/27/26

This weekend we have just finished building our buoy game elements for the competition. The buoys we made follow the team handbook for the most part but our LED strip is smaller than the official one. We made perfboards with all the electrical components on it that had 2 outputs for the LEDS, a button for manual control. Later on we will modify these electrical boards to also have a receiver on them so that we could control all the buoys remotely with a single controller. Then, we faced the challenge of making all the buoys water resistant in case water splashed on the electronics. To do this we put the perfboards with all the electronics in ziplock bags, sealed them, and taped these bags to the inside of the buoy so nothing moves, with only wires for the battery and LED coming out. Subsequently, we put the batteries in enclosures made out of tupperware so that we could easily remove the batteries just by opening the lid. This tupperware was connected to the rest of the buoy via velcro straps that latched onto the PVC pipes of the Buoys and also were connected to the inside of the box with holes drilled in the sides. In the end this gives us functional buoys that we can use for testing, with next steps being adding receivers to the buoys for remote control