Features on WII5 — Waves In Ice Buoys

Communications

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

WII5 buoys use two communication channels — long-range satellite for operational telemetry, and short-range local for field configuration and read-out without breaking the enclosure seal.

Iridium — short-burst-data uplink for telemetry.
Local — BLE, serial, and Wi-Fi for in-field access.

Iridium

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Iridium short-burst-data is the primary operational channel: small payloads, global coverage, low power per message. Each transmission carries a calculated wave-statistics packet rather than raw samples.

MPPT

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

MPPT (maximum power point tracking) charge controller for the solar input that keeps the battery pack alive between sunny windows.

Why we designed our own

At the small battery sizes used in solar WII buoys, no off-the-shelf MPPT existed that was a good fit — commercial MPPT controllers were designed back then for vehicle, off-grid, or marine packs at least an order of magnitude larger than what a buoy carries. The available options were either too lossy at low currents, drew too much quiescent power, or had input/output ranges that didn’t match a small solar panel + lithium-pack combination.

Waves

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The wave-statistics calculation reduces raw accelerometer samples to a compact summary: significant wave height (Hs), peak period (Tp), and total wave energy across the spectrum.

Calculations

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What the buoy turns its raw sensor stream into before transmission.

Waves — significant wave height, peak period, energy.
Direction — directional spectrum analysis.

Direction

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Directional analysis combines accelerometer data with GPS heading to estimate where the wave energy is coming from.

GPS

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

GPS provides position, timing, and where supported, directional heading used in the directional wave-spectrum analysis.

Local

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Local channels used in-field for configuration, diagnostics, and read-out without breaking the enclosure seal: BLE for app-driven access, serial for direct console, and Wi-Fi for higher-bandwidth bulk download.

Kistler

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kistler high-precision accelerometer. Used where the IMU’s MEMS accelerometer doesn’t have enough resolution for the wave-motion calculations.

Sensors

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The sensor catalog. Not every buoy variant carries every sensor — see the buoy types for which sensors ship with which build.

MPPT — solar charging.
GPS — position and directional heading.
Kistler — high-precision accelerometer.
IMU — inertial measurement.
Temperature — water and internal temperature sensors.
Anemometer — wind speed and direction.
Cameras — visual deployment / surface imaging.

IMU

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The IMU provides 9-axis motion data: accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, used for orientation and motion estimation alongside the Kistler.

Temperature

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Temperature sensors for water (where the buoy enclosure permits) and internal electronics monitoring.

Anemometer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Anemometer for wind speed and direction. Carried on variants intended for combined sea-state and atmospheric observation.

Cameras

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cameras carried by some variants for visual deployment confirmation and surface imaging during operation.