So close...

After all of the time and effort that our group put into getting our solar panel wired correctly, Mr. Kamalu brought to our attention that we had failed to make a hole in the box that we were using to house our wires for them to trail out of. So our first main endeavor today was to rewire everything and thread all of the wires into a tiny hole in the box. Once we completed that, we took the solar panel and PPPT down to middle school to implement our design and test it out.
When we got down to middle school, it was simply a matter of wiring the solar panel to the PPPT, and then the PPPT to the batteries. We acheived this without much of a struggle, but things can never happen without a hitch.
The second problem that we encountered was that the tubing that we had to attach to the pump was too tiny. The pump requires a 3/4" inner diameter tubing, but we had a 3/4" outer diameter tubing, a simple mistake that anyone could have made. We temporarily used a spare water hose that Mr. Omo had hanging around to hook up to the pump. The fit was a bit iffy, but when Nicole flipped the switch, the pump worked and we had a flow of water running from the fishpond to the grow bed above!
This didn't last for long though. The water stopped flowing after about 10-15 seconds, which was really disappointing. Alan used his super, handy-dandy multimeter (our favoritest things ever) and noticed that we had a lack of energy from the switch and the PPPT. This was really odd to all of us because the system worked for a bit, and then stopped. Hopefully we're able to get this problem fixed soon, but in the mean time, the water pump is able to run off of the power that is stored in the batteries for about two days, and on sunny days, the solar panel will bring in enough power to keep the pump running.
The theme for our group today? Never ever give up! Even though we faced some serious highs and lows today, Nicole's bracelet kept us positive and we know that we'll be able to come out of this project successful.

image: http://www.joyjars.org/jj/wp-content/uploads/pic-negu-bracelet.jpg

P.S. I know we're supposed to have our own multi-media, but my internet is taking FOREVER to upload the video that I intended on using for this posting, so hopefully I can get it up sometime tomorrow :)