Hi everyone,
I am the research and monitoring coordinator for Mission: Iconic Reefs, a coral restoration program in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. We are in the process of acquiring two buoys with two Bristlemouth units each and ideally would like to integrate a CTD sensor as we are highly interested in examining salinity. Some folks working with the RBRconcerto3 integration pipeline were kind enough to email me, but right now that instrument is cost prohibitive for our budget, and we actually have access to loaner Seabird SBE37/MicroCAT units (SBE 37 SI and SIP MicroCAT | Sea-Bird Scientific - Overview | Sea-Bird) So, I thought I would ask if anyone here has done even preliminary work with integration of this unit or other Seabird products.
Thanks in advance!
Katey
Welcome Katey! 
No experience with Sea-Bird sensors yet, but the User Manual looks very thorough and helpful as a starting place: https://www.seabird.com/asset-get.download.jsa?id=54627862346
(If that manual doesn’t match your particular sensor, just click the Downloads tab of the page you linked above — they have lots of documentation.)
It has different modes of operation. Any of them seem like they could work with the dev kit. The manual seems to recommend “Polled (controlled) mode” when you’re sending data in real time. You should try the different modes and see what’s easiest for your team to work with.
It looks like they have RS232 and RS485 models — depending on what you have, you’ll need to select between those on the dev kit. Here’s a pic of my dev kit with the RS232 shunts installed for example.
Check out the dev kit super user guide here for more information on that front: Development Board User Guide
Have you worked through the guides yet? After the initial ones, there’s specifically a guide for integrating an RS232 sensor: Bristlemouth Dev Kit Guide: Integrating an RS232 Serial Sensor
Good luck! Let us know how it goes!
And of course if anyone actually has experience with Sea-Bird sensors, please share your experience!
Thanks for the tag, @zack_j !
Hello Katey - welcome!
We are a research team at the UW in Seattle who have been working on building small, low-cost low power salinity sensors and CTDs. The technology is still a little early for long deployments, but we are getting closer to having something that could be put out for a week or so - depending on the accuracy you need.
What accuracy do you need? Over what timespan? how many sensors would you like to test with? We might be able to collaborate!
Would love to chat. Feel free to contact me via email anuscheh@uw.edu!
Thank you so much for your reply, Zachary! I look forward to reading these resources and sharing them with my team, and will absolutely report back on this forum with progress we have made.
Thanks Anuscheh! I will email you now.
Hi Katey,
I hope you’re doing well. I wanted to check in to see if there have been any updates on finding a driver or useful resources for integrating the SBE37 sensor via RS232. Your insights on any progress in this regard would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time and assistance.
Best regards,
Shatha
Hi Shatha,
thanks for your email and sorry for the late reply!
Unfortunately we have not made any progress on this - I was in contact with Anuscheh at UW Seattle and they had been working towards getting something up and running that would be able to be deployed for about a week. I will send a followup email to them, and then get back to you!
Best,
Katey
Hi Katey,
Thank you for the update! No problem about the delay.
I wanted to let you know that I have successfully integrated the SBE37 using the Bristlemouth, and it’s currently in the testing phase. Everything is going great so far!
Looking forward to hearing back from you. Wishing you all the best! Feel free to reach out anytime if you have any questions.
Best,
Shatha
Hi Shatha,
that is excellent news! I would definitely be interested in a brief meeting with you about your experience setting that up, how it is working, what the deployment time is like etc- so please let me know if you would be willing!
thanks,
Katey
Hello again Shatha,
I hope your fall semester is going well!
I am writing to see if you are willing and able to meet with me to discuss your progress with the sensor integration!
Best,
Katey