Marine Instrumentation
From Seamonster
- Marine Ecosystems
- Marine Instrumentation
- Marine Data
Contents |
Introduction
This will be the master page for marine ecosystem instrumentation. For now it is more of a placeholder; describes pulling together some sensors and so forth.
Photic Zone Measurement
The idea here is to create a prototype mote-based instrument and see if it works for profiling the light penetration to depth in (primarily marine) environments.
- Get a 10-conductor cable 100 feet (30 meters) in length. This is the power cable. (done)
- Mark this off in 5 meter increments, actually slightly longer because the cable is not used to measure depth. (done)
- Splice off pairs of wires at the end and every 5 meters up from this end: Roughly 30 meters, 25, 20, 15, 10. (done)
- Tape off the cable at each splice to help maintain its structural strength (done)
- Modify SM-Koala (Nick's VM) to take samples every 10 seconds; email with Rob
- Program 5 motes (Numbers 2, 17, 10, 3, 4, and 5) with Sensing Node (SM-Koala) with sampling interval 10 seconds (not done!!!)
- Remove the battery clips from these motes
- Carefully solder the motes to the + - pairs along the power cable.
- Build a 3.2 volt power supply (3.0 volts is ok) e.g. from multiple D-cell batteries
- Attach this battery to the cable power lead including an on/off switch
- Test: Apply power to the cable and verify that all motes are receiving 3.2 volts
- Cover all motes and nearby cable in epoxy.
- Obtain 5 USB "covers" made of rubber or plastic
- Cover the USB connector leads on the mote with these USB covers
- Epoxy the mote and then cut away the cover to expose a (we hope) still-usable USB connector.
- Ensure that all leads and other conductors are coated and trim away extra material.
- The resulting structure will be fragile.
- Carefully place the cable and battery in a dedicated protective box.
- Read the rest of these instructions before going out in a boat.
- Create a 30 meter leaded rope cable marked off in 5 meter intervals. This is the marker cable.
- Place a weight (10lb for example) at the end of the marker cable.
- In the boat clip the sensor cable to the marker cable to place the motes at five meter intervals.
- Power up the power cable.
- Lower the cable assembly into the water.
- Note date time location water conditions weather etcetera and dwell procedure.
- Recover the sensor string to the boat and place all sensors in close proximity to a base station
- Pull the data from the motes wirelessly
