• Sea Trial Two update

    Mike Cochrane • 07/08/2015 at 09:35 • 2 comments

    "Sea Trial" two has been going on since Sunday 14th of June. I installed two units, one on a buoy at St Heliers Beach and one at neighbouring Kohimarama Beach. The two units are slightly different, one has the same external antenna used in the first trial, the second has an internal antenna. The intention of this difference was to confirm if the signal strength was going to be sufficient without having to put another hole through the waterproof case.

    See the results:

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  • Version Two: Proper mounting straps

    Mike Cochrane • 06/20/2015 at 11:08 • 0 comments

    Version one was tied to a "5 knot" marker buoy with some string:

    This was effective, but not ideal. There's no way to remove the sensor without undoing everything. It's hard to tie knots when you're bobbing around in a wetsuit in the water. And it just doesn't look good.

    So time to find something better!

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  • Version Two: Stop eating batteries!

    Mike Cochrane • 06/15/2015 at 09:40 • 1 comment

    After a successful first deployment it's time to work on the battery life.

    I already had some ideas for how to reduce the power usage, so time to start working on them:

    • Turn the Sim800l off and keep it off
    • Hibernate the Teeny 3.0 instead of just delay()
    • Reduce the time each send cycle takes
    • Kill the blinky LED

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  • Version One: Sea Trail

    Mike Cochrane • 06/14/2015 at 12:17 • 0 comments

    Time to stick it out in the water!

    Software

    The code is unchanged from the bench test except for adding an extra 5 minutes to the delay to get ~10 minute updates instead of the 5 minute updates on the bench test.

    Hardware

    The hardware is also basically unchanged from the bench test. It now has two batteries, fresh off the charger, wired in parallel. They are held in a 3D printed battery holder.

    Mounting it in the sea

    On Saturday 30th of May 2015 I threw the sensor and some cord in my swim bag and did a normal couple of kilometer training swim with friends. Afterwards Rosie and I swam back out to one of the "5 knot" marker buoys 200 meters offshore and "mounted" it.

    Okay, so "mounted" is a bit generous. It's tied one with some cord, and has some labels scribbled on it so it doesn't look too much like a remote trigger for a bomb.

    Test Results

    It ran smoothly for a bit over 12 days!

    Only a couple of data points were missing (likely GSM connectivity issues). The datasheet said the Sim800L would operate down to 3.4v and that was spot on. It sent three readings at 3.402v, then went quite for a while then one final reading at 3.391v.

    A couple of days later a pre work swim allowed me to retrieve it. When inspected then enclosure was not 100% dry, there was some moisture present. I'm not sure if this was condensation from when it was closed up, or if it got in while installed. The gasket wasn't totally clean so it's possible that's how some water got in.

    Let's call that a success and time for version two!

  • Version One: Bench Trial

    Mike Cochrane • 06/14/2015 at 11:26 • 0 comments

    Before installing the first prototype in the sea I wanted to run it for a while to see what the battery life might be and ensure the code doesn't mysteriously die after a period of time.

    Circuit

    A teensy 3.0 connected to the cheapest Sim800L breakout I could find. This breakout has the Tx/Rx, Power and Reset pins broken out. A simple resistor voltage divider on the Rx input of the Sim800L takes care of level shifting the Teensy's 3.3v to the needed 2.8v IO.

    Software

    The way the breakout for the Sim800L is wired, the module turns on as soon as it gets power. The plan was to tell the module to power off when not being used then use the Reset pin to bring it back to life. I wrote some quick code, wired up the Reset pin to a digital IO pin on the Teensy and I could turn it off, then reset it to bring it back to life so moved on to the rest of the code thinking this was sorted - more on this later.

    Next was making an HTTP request, there's plenty of code examples for making a TCP connection and sending HTTP requests with the Simcom GSM modules. Then I checked the datasheet and found it had HTTP request support build in (why doesn't everyone just use this?). So making an HTTP GET request is pretty trivial, I hacked that up and had it sending me temperatures ever minute shutting down the module in between, it worked okay (code was a mess but worked - optimised for implementation speed?).

    Next was to leave it going longer with 10 minute updates. So I changed the delay at the end of the loop and tried it out, first a delay() that long was coming up short, 9 x 60 second delays worked so that's what I used. The first data came through, the Sim800L turned off. All looked good. Then the Sim800l turned back on! I checked the serial debugging, I didn't turn it on! Turns out the way the breakout board is wired it always turns back on about 30 seconds after being powered down. In my earlier tests I was resetting it before it had time to auto start so I didn't find this. Nothing I can do about this on this breakout, so I've got to live with it.

    New plan, put it in flight mode when I don't need it - the lowest power mode in the datasheet that I could use - then put it back in normal mode when I need to send data. So that's what I did:

    Test results

    Everything worked fine! I set it at ~5 min updates and gave it a single half used battery and left it running for a couple of days outside in the rain and wind.

    Extrapolating the battery voltage drop to two fully charged batteries and ~10min updates suggested 10 days battery life was possible. That was good enough for now, time for sea trials!