Heron Island Sensor Float 1

A round 1.4m yellow buoy has been deployed in the Heron Island lagoon as part of the sensor network infrastructure at Heron Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef off Gladstone, Australia.

The buoy is configured as a sensor-float with a Campbell Scientific logger, a spread-spectrum radio for communicating with the on-reef wireless network, a GPS and initially a surface mounted (30cm under the water surface) thermistor.

The float is moored in the lagoon of Heron Island in around 3m of water and will be used to monitor the flow of water through the lagoon. It will be fitted with surface salinity and bottom depth and temperature in late 2008.

The unit will be serviced every six months and will be used in the future for attaching new sets of sensors. The buoy is re-locatable and the GPS data should be used to find the current location.

The buoy is one of five re-locatable platforms in the lagoon at Heron Island onto which sensor will be located. The buoys initially have a Campbell Scientific loggers powered off two 5W solar panels, a Garmin GPS unit and one thermistor located at the base of the buoy around 30cm below the water line. The buoys use a Campbell Scientific spread-spectrum radio to talk back to the base station located on Heron Island.

Power Supply
Battery Backed (1 x 33Ahr AGM with Solar Regulator), 2 x 5W Solar Panel Supply.

Logger Settings -
Pakbus Address - 171
Logger Setup as node (isRouter = False)
CSDC7 comms board rate set at 34K
CSD7 Beacon = 21600
CSDC7 Neighbours range 1 - 1, 110 - 110, 120 - 120


Over-Reef RF Network -
RF411 attached to the CSIO port of the logger

Radio Settings -
Active Interface - Datalogger CSDC
SDC Address 7
Protocol: Pakbus aware
Radio Net Address - 0
Hop Sequence - 0
Power mode - less than 2mA 1 Second
Retry level - Low