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Meet Danu — a homemade submarine who's being built to explore Lake Michigan's shipwrecks all by herself. 🌊 Before buying another part, we did the least flashy but most important thing: we wrote down her whole dream on paper. What she must do, how deep she'll go, and the lines she'll never cross. Her mission? Find wrecks with no pilot and no cord, film them in stunning detail, then rise to the surface to phone home before diving again. And her golden rule: look, film, never take. These wrecks are protected treasures. 💙 We turned the whole spec into a series of collectible trading cards — one a week. Card #01, 'Explore on her own,' drops today. Swipe through and collect all ten! #DiveWithDanu #Submarine #ShipwreckHunter #LakeMichigan #OceanExploration #FatherDaughter #STEM #BuiltInTheOpen #TradingCards

We wrote down Danu's entire dream — how deep, how far, and the lines she'll never cross. Then we turned it into trading cards. Card #01 'Explore on her own' drops today! 🌊 https://divewithdanu.com/log#entry-21

After a month of firmware, USB gremlins, and flight-controller heartbeats, we stepped back and wrote the requirements doc — the whole dream, stated precisely. Every part and every line of code now answers one question: which requirement does it serve? The targets: 300 m operational depth, 3–5 day missions on ~3.6 kWh, 30–50 km round trip at a patient cruise (drag grows with the cube of speed), all in a hull under ~2.2 m and ~40 kg so one person can launch from shore. That last constraint shapes everything — writing multi-day endurance against one-person launch is exactly the tension that resized our battery tube last week, while it was still a purchase order, not a rebuild. Safety is deterministic: the AI advises, but geofence, energy-reserve, depth, and deadline validators decide — the safety chip doesn't even know the AI exists. Fail-to-surface is stacked: drop-weights, independent timer release, strobe, acoustic beacon. These are design targets; reservoir tests grade the homework. Requirements are public, released as numbered cards. #01 drops today. #AUV #Robotics #JetsonNano #SystemsEngineering #MarineTech #Sonar #EmbeddedSystems #RequirementsEngineering #BuiltInTheOpen

Danu's requirements are published: 300 m depth, 3–5 day missions on ~3.6 kWh, 30–50 km range, <40 kg single-person launch. AI advises; deterministic validators decide. Fail-to-surface, stacked. Card #01 drops today. https://divewithdanu.com/log#entry-21

Danu has a heartbeat! ❤️ This weekend our little submarine got her nervous system — the part that keeps her level, holds her depth, and tells the motors what to do — and it powered itself for the very first time. Of course, nothing goes smoothly: a cable that flat-out didn't fit, and one heart-stopping moment where the computer went totally silent (spoiler: we just needed to reboot the LAPTOP 😅). But then the screen lit up — 14.95 volts, exactly what we set — and she was alive. Swipe through to see her first vitals. A brain that now has a body to feel with. 🌊 #danuthesub #homemadesubmarine #fatherdaughter #buildinpublic #STEMkids #makerlife #underwaterrobot #tinkering #firstheartbeat

Danu's flight controller is alive. We flashed a Pixhawk 6C with ArduSub — the open-source underwater autopilot — to give it its reflexes: hold depth, stay level, command thrusters, fail safe. The careful part: powering it. Instead of a battery, we used a bench supply with a current limit (0.5 A), then deliberately shorted the leads to confirm the safety net held before trusting real hardware. Power runs through a power module that reports voltage and amperage back to the controller. Snags: the module cable didn't fit the port (we sourced the right one rather than splice and risk the board), and the board went silent over USB — turned out the LAPTOP needed the reboot. Payoff: booted on its own power at ~0.1 A, reporting 14.95 V in QGroundControl, matching the supply to the decimal. #Pixhawk6C #ArduSub #QGroundControl #AUV #flightcontroller #benchtesting #powermodule #embeddedsystems #robotics #buildinpublic

Danu has a heartbeat: 14.95 volts of it ❤️ Her flight controller woke up and powered itself for the first time — after a cable that didn't fit and one heart-stopping silent-computer moment (the fix? reboot the laptop 😅). https://divewithdanu.com/log#entry-20

Danu's Pixhawk 6C is up: flashed ArduSub, powered via a power module behind a 0.5A current-limited bench supply (short-tested first). Booted on its own power at ~0.1A, reported 14.95V in QGroundControl — matched the supply exactly. https://divewithdanu.com/log#entry-20

Danu's compute is alive: an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano — the board with the big fan in the photos. It'll eventually run the vision models that classify what the cameras see and drive her navigation decisions. Getting there was two jobs: flash Ubuntu onto a fast NVMe SSD (the little stick on the underside), then add the AI stack — CUDA and friends — for quick model inference. The snag: a 256GB USB-C drive wouldn't even show up as a boot option. An old 32GB USB-A thumb drive booted instantly, no network needed. Lesson logged: if your Jetson won't boot the USB, try a smaller plain USB-A stick. After that, AI libraries installed and we reached the board headless over SSH — exactly how we'll talk to it once it's sealed in the hull. Up next: the flight controller, depth & motion sensors, and first thruster spin. 🔧 #Jetson #JetsonOrinNano #NVIDIA #EdgeAI #CUDA #NVMe #Ubuntu #SSH #Robotics #AUV

Danu got her BRAIN this weekend! 🧠 It's the little board with the big fan you'll spot in the photos — the part that will one day look through her cameras and decide "that's a shipwreck, not a rock" and know when it's time to turn for home. Of course, it fought us first. The fancy new USB drive we tried? The brain refused to even acknowledge it existed. Twenty minutes of "did we break it?!" later, we dug out an ancient little thumb drive... and it worked instantly. 😅 We promised to show the faceplants, not just the wins. This one's filed under: sometimes the fix is just "use the other one." Onward! 🐙 #DanuTheSub #Submarine #FatherDaughter #BuildInPublic #STEM #MakerLife #Robotics #LearningTogether #Wonder

Danu — engineering log #0. A father–daughter build, fully in the open (engineer by training, dentist by day). The platform: Jetson Orin + Pixhawk/ArduSub + an independent STM32 supervisor, 300 m depth target, LTE + Iridium comms, DVL bottom-lock nav, DIY variable-buoyancy engine. Status: just getting onto the bench — first power-on now. → divewithdanu.com/build

Meet Danu 🌊 A father–daughter project: we're building a homemade autonomous submarine to explore Lake Michigan's shipwrecks — and one day, the oceans. We're on day one: parts on the bench, powering up for the first time, documenting every win and every flood in the open. Follow along → divewithdanu.com

Danu got her brain this weekend! 🧠 A few hours of "who's in charge here?"... then a surprise plot twist involving two USB drives. She's online. Full story: https://divewithdanu.com/log#entry-18

Danu's brain is online: Jetson Orin Nano, Ubuntu on NVMe, CUDA stack for vision. Gotcha: a 256GB USB-C drive wouldn't boot — an old 32GB USB-A stick worked instantly. Now reachable headless over SSH. Next: flight controller + sensors. https://divewithdanu.com/log#entry-18

Test Post - testing the post