put a message in a bottle as well as toss it in the ocean, as well as if you’re extremely lucky, years later you may get a response. decrease a floating Arduino-fied buoy into the ocean as well as if you’ve engineered it well, it may send data back to you for even longer.
At least that’s what [Wayne] has learned because his MDBuoyProject went online with the introducing of a diy drift buoy last year. The BOM for the buoy reads like a page from the Adafruit website: Arduino Trinket, an RTC, GPS module, Iridium satellite modem, sensors, as well as a solar panel. whatever lives in a remove plastic dry box together with a can of desiccant as well as a LiPo battery.
The solar panel has a view with the situation lid, as well as the buoy is kept upright by a long PVC boom on the bottom of the case. two versions have been developed as well as introduced so far; alas, the Pacific buoy was lost soon after it was launched. however the Atlantic buoy chosen up the Gulf Stream as well as has been drifting slowly toward Europe because last summer, sending back telemetry. A future version aims to integrate an Automatic identification System (AIS) receiver, presumably to report the signals of AIS transponders on close-by ships as they pass.
We like the interest to detail in addition to the low expense of this build. It’s a job that’s well within reach of a STEM program, akin to the numerous high-altitude diy balloon jobs we’ve featured before.
Thanks to [Adrian] for the tip.