PHOTOVOLTAIC MARTIAN BUGS

Project Log

January 9th, 2004: Winter Break

Where: Jobst 248

What got done:

For those that have been following the web site closely you will see that there have been many improvements to the web site. To make editing faster and easier the page has been converted to use cascading style sheets. This should help keep the pages uniform and looking good. Also the menu bar on the left side of the page is now being generated using a server side include. This may sound terribly complicated for just a few links, but when the menu bar appears on every page, making a link change results in an extraneous amount of copy pasting. Hopefully these changes will allow us to quickly make updates to our progress. Not knowing anything about style sheets or the existence of server side includes made these updates take longer than they probably should have. But with hours of struggling and nagging of more knowledgeable individuals the page is hopefully, in the long run, a respectable informational resource.

What needs doing:

We have a lot to get done before break ends. We still have yet to get our equipment ordered from the manufacturers. The worry lies not on the motor or microcontroller but with the solar panels. The fear is that due to the specialty nature of the panels they will take several weeks to get in. The goal is to have everything ordered on monday of next week giving a week and a half before the semester starts. Until then more web site improvements will be made and we will begin design on the power systems that will move the bug. With any luck we will have a few initial designs ready for the first lab day.