Today Trent and I removed one of the two original monitoring units, a semi-sealed box that contained equipment for monitoring the pressure and atmosphere compositions. This was a feet of engineering as much as brute strength. The steel boxes are heavy and were held in place by multiple conduits. Trent assembled a clever extension to a socket set that gave us a nearly four-foot reach!

The analog data was fed through a massive, multi-strand, individually shielded cable to a separate “booth”, just outside the main sealed door and under the overhang, where it was read by the team lead and visitors to the Test Module. Our intent is to retain the sealed conduit, maybe even use all or part of the booth, but instead we will run ethernet and USB, umbilical cords to the outside world.

Why not wireless? Ever tried trouble shooting a router or upgrading firmware over wi-fi? A hard line is always the right thing to have (else you get stuck in the matrix) , such that our team can interface with those on the inside, if need be, with direct lines. We are debating if we should retain the original, very large transfer box or replace it with something smaller, more water tight.

Hard to reach, photo by Trent Tresch Hard to reach, photo by Trent Tresch

What a mess!, photo by Trent Tresch What a mess!, photo by Trent Tresch