Blog — History, Releases, News

• 1: History
• 1.1: Korea Polar Research Institute 2024
• 1.2: TWK5 Canada 2019–2021
• 1.3: TAS 2019 to 2022
• 1.4: Melbourne University 2018
• 1.5: Japan 2018
• 1.6: NIWA 2017
• 1.7: NYU UAE 2017
• 1.8: Japan 2016
• 1.9: NIWA Test 2016
• 1.10: Internal Test Deployment
• 1.11: Scott Base Testing 2014
• 1.12: NIWA 2012 — Original Deployment (Nature 2014)
• 2: Releases
• 3: News
• 3.1: WII5 Site Launch and First Open-Source Release
• 3.2: Random Recovery

Three streams:

• History — deployment stories, ship returns, presentations, deployment videos.
• Releases — version drops for firmware, maths code, and server.
• News — announcements and project updates.

1 - History

Deployment stories and project history.

1.1 - Korea Polar Research Institute 2024

Eleven-buoy deployment with the Korea Polar Research Institute starting 1 March 2024 (project id kopri). Details, ship, location, retrievals, and photos to follow.

1.2 - TWK5 Canada 2019–2021

Two-buoy deployment in Canadian waters starting 1 December 2019 and running through 2021 (project id twk5). Details, ship, location, retrievals, and photos to follow.

1.3 - TAS 2019 to 2022

Fourteen-buoy deployment running through Tasmanian waters from 1 July 2019 through 2022 (project id tas2019). One of the longest-running WII5 projects to date. Details, ship, location, retrievals, and photos to follow.

1.4 - Melbourne University 2018

Single-buoy deployment with the University of Melbourne starting 1 November 2018 (project id unimelb2018). Details, ship, location, retrievals, and photos to follow.

1.5 - Japan 2018

Three-buoy deployment in Japan starting 26 March 2018 (project id japan2018). Details, ship, location, retrievals, and photos to follow.

1.6 - NIWA 2017

Fourteen-buoy deployment with NIWA (New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) starting 1 April 2017 (project id niwa2017).

This was the Intel Edison all-in-one Linux generation: the buoy ran everything — sensor capture, GPS, Iridium, scheduling — on a single Edison module running Linux. No AVR companion CPU. The Edison was chosen for its small form factor and reasonable power profile at the time; it later became the limiting factor (Intel discontinued the Edison line) and prompted the move back to AVR for WII5.

The dashboard, capture pipeline, and watchdog management for this build are documented under Software → Other → WII3_Dashboard.

Details, ship, location, and retrievals to follow.

1.7 - NYU UAE 2017

Two-buoy deployment with NYU UAE (New York University Abu Dhabi) starting 1 April 2017 (project id nyuuae). Details, ship, location, retrievals, and photos to follow.

1.8 - Japan 2016

Two-buoy deployment in Japan starting 9 September 2016 (project id japan2016). Details, ship, location, retrievals, and photos to follow.

1.9 - NIWA Test 2016

Internal NIWA test deployment (project id niwatest2016). Zero buoys recorded — appears to be a system test rather than a real deployment.

The dashboard records a deployment date of 13/05/2026, which looks like a placeholder default rather than a real date. Verify and correct when the deployment story is written up.

1.10 - Internal Test Deployment

Internal test deployment (project id test2016), two buoys. Not a real-world deployment — used for testing the server and dashboards.

The dashboard records a deployment date of 13/05/2026, which looks like a placeholder default rather than a real date.

1.11 - Scott Base Testing 2014

NIWA-led field testing of the WII2 sensor board at Scott Base, Antarctica — November 2014. The trip exercised the second-generation buoy hardware end-to-end before any open-water deployment.

Hardware under test:

• Sparton inclinometer for orientation
• MPU9150 IMU (accelerometer / gyroscope / magnetometer)
• Kistler high-precision accelerometer for wave motion
• Venus GPS for position and timing
• Iridium 9602 / 9522B SBD modems for telemetry
• Sampling at 2–8 Hz to SD card, with periodic SBD transmission

The WII2 firmware tree that drove this trial is documented under Software → Other → WII2_Board. The campaign sat between WII1 (the original 2012 buoy) and the WII3 generation that followed.

See also

• WII1–WII3 buoy types — the broader generational lineage.
• NIWA 2012 — Original Deployment (Nature 2014) — the earlier WII1 work that produced the seminal Nature result.

1.12 - NIWA 2012 — Original Deployment (Nature 2014)

The seminal NIWA deployment: eight WII buoys sent into the Antarctic sea ice in 2012, collecting the first digital sea-ice wave-motion measurements ever made. The data they returned became the basis for the project’s headline publication two years later:

Kohout A. L., Williams M., Dean S., et al. (2014). Storm-induced sea-ice breakup and the implications for ice extent. Nature, 509, 604–607.

This was the work that established empirically — not just modelled — that ocean waves drive sea-ice breakup in the marginal ice zone, with direct implications for the rate and timing of Antarctic ice-edge retreat.

Every WII generation since has been an iteration on the platform first proved by these eight buoys.

See also

• Publications — full bibliography including the Nature paper.
• SIPEX II — a separate 2012 Antarctic observation campaign, also led by NIWA.
• Alison Kohout’s project page — the scientific lead on the deployment.

2 - Releases

Version drops and what’s in each.

3 - News

Announcements and updates.

3.1 - WII5 Site Launch and First Open-Source Release

May 2026. This site goes live today, and with it the first open-source release of WII5 source material.

What’s public from launch:

• Firmware — the AVR / ESP32 C++ control code that runs on every WII5 buoy, now mirrored at gitea.sh3d.com.au/Sh3d/WII5Firmware. The page carries code highlights and deep links into the repository.
• Buoys catalog — every generation from WII1 through WII5, plus electronics, enclosures, test equipment, and the onboard data-processing host.
• Data — pointer pages to the public Mendeley archives for SIPEX II, PIPERS, and JARE-61, plus the publications bibliography (including the 2014 Nature paper).
• History — deployment-by-deployment log going back to the 2014 NIWA work that produced the seminal Nature result.

The rest of the WII repository family — earlier dashboards, servers, maths tooling, test rigs, data archives — is inventoried at Software → Other and is possibly available on request. None of it has been individually assessed for release yet (licensing, customer-specific identifiers, third-party dependencies all need looking at first). If something there sounds useful, ask and we’ll review it.

The reasoning behind the release is on the Why page: continuity, auditability, due diligence, and as a way to make the work discoverable. It’s a starting point, not a finished product — feedback welcome.

— Scott Penrose (contact)

3.2 - Random Recovery

Placeholder. Replace with the story behind the recovery — where it was found, by whom, and what state the buoy came back in.