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I am building a prototype for a remote controlled vessel, the LoRa Marine Environmental Ranger (LoRa MER) that gathers environmental data and relays it to a shore based station using Arduino MKR WAN 1300 LoRa boards. This post is the eighth in a series, and describes the first successful sea trial and how it almost ended in disaster.
Implementation Status
Last week I described how the boat was disassembled and inspected. Some dubious hot glue work was done to secure the electronics and a quick test was done in the bathtub. This week, despite the wet weather I was able to get out with the kids and perform sea tests.. Changes from last week are in red bold
Boat
- RC control inspected and retested
- MKR WAN 1300 firmware tested
- Following sensors / hardware more permanently fitted and tested
- ST3775 TFT Display
- ICP10100 Atmospheric Pressure / Temperature
- NEO-6M-0-001 GPS
- Thermistor Water Temperature
- Thermistor Air Temperature
- KX224-I2C 3 axis Accelerometer
- RPR-0521RSLight Sensor
- TSW-10 Turbidity Sensor
- Sea Tests Performed
Shore base:
- Enclosure completed
- TFT screen fitted
- Firmware has LoRa reception (polls) and responds with RSSI
- MKR WAN 1300 connected to Raspberry Pi by USB serial
- Python script sends data over internet to adafruit.io
- Dashboard implemented on adafruit.io
- Fitted a DIY dipole antenna
- Tested TTGO LoRa32 with MKRWAN 1300
Sea Trials
For these tests it was just me, the captain, and science officer. Functionally, everything performed well. Although we did not have a Raspberry Pi sending the data over the internet, the shore base captured data as it was coming in and displayed it properly. In the photo below our 3 year old science officer is holding the base station and reporting out pertinent information.
The radio controlled boat also performed well while the 7 year old captain skillfully navigated it around the duck pond.
Catastrophe avoided. We moved downstream to a less dangerous area for the boat but it started to rain and we called it a day.
Next Steps
There is a lot I can do to improve the way the instruments are fitted and to improve the mounting of the antennas. I hope to do that over the coming weeks and get one more test in and do a little more citizen science.
MKR WAN 1300: LoRa Marine Environmental Ranger
Week 3: Building a Shore Station and Starting the Boat
Week 3.5: Testing Turbidity and Posting to the Internet
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