Hello. I am working on a research project that involves 3 SoFar buoys positioned in close proximity to a beach with WiFi access and a raspberry pi device with a zigbee and WiFi antenna. I want to figure out a way to access data from the SoFar buoys without having to rely on it uploading via the SoFar satellite service. Is Bristlemouth a technology that can help achieve that?
Hi there @emansouri
I think we had the opportunity to talk today over zoom about this but I also wanted to answer you here in case others are interested in pursuing an integration that allows them to use a different telemetry pathway than the Spotter buoy.
Presently there are two main areas of development that would be needed. The first is connecting a novel telemetry module. There are a number of interesting possibilities just going from the Spotter >BM> mote + devkit >SPI/UART/etc> telemetry module. Something like a Arduino + xbee or RPi with WiFi could certainly work but in most applications for ocean data collection you’d probably need something like an LTE, LoRa, or other longer range communication device. Anybody reading this who has ideas or is working on a standalone Bristlemouth-enabled telemetry module-- please make one! This would be huge!
The next area of development is building an app to subscribe or request data from the Spotter buoy. As of writing this, there are some data topics available from the Spotter but the wind/wave/barometer data isn’t yet implemented. This is something that is in the backlog for Sofar but I don’t have insight into when it will move forward…but when it does the Spotter should act more like any other Bristlemouth sensor, able to both send and receive data.
Having said this, I believe there are a few pioneers working on this right now. Specifically I think @Ferrysafety is working on getting a telemetry module that speaks over AIS. And @jaszylu was exploring LoRa last we spoke.
Open to thoughts and feedback!
~Zack
Zack,
Thank you for sending this. Will share with the team – and discuss the challenge.
Roberta
Is there any way to get the data you need out of Spotter other than Iridium? Are those data i.e. stored internally and can be downloaded somehow (i.e. via USB)? If so, maybe some “dirty hack” would work?
Thank you @zack_j for all your great information and knowledge yesterday. As I shared I am completely new to SoFar and related marine applications, coming from a meteorological and agricultural sensor background where a lot of the applications I build are critically reliant on instantenous (to the second) measurements. The example I shared with you was the need to measure instantaneous wind conditions to assess the safety of transitting a bridge in a high profile vehicle. Therefore, my initial objective was to be able to access SoFar data in a similar manner for us in a “situational awareness” application - I.e. what are the instantaneous wave/surf conditions - in a “close to shore” situation. From what I gleaned, and from what your post suggests, the prospects of doing that now are very complex and would require a lot of custom hardware and software configuration and equipping a SoFar buoy with a cellular SIM capability and accessing the data from the SoFar API would be the best option for now. If there are efforts underway or those that evolve that would eventually make it more feasible to directly access the data on the SoFar device via some sort of bluetooth, WiFi, Zigbee, etc configuration, I’d welcome the opportunity to be part of a pilot/alpha. Thank you again.
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Is there any way to get the data you need out of Spotter other than Iridium? Are those data i.e. stored internally and can be downloaded somehow (i.e. via USB)? If so, maybe some “dirty hack” would work?
For a truly remote system…let me ask around and see.
For a system with internet access, grabbing Spotter data over the API is super straightforward.