Orpheus Island Sensor Float 2

A round 1.4m yellow buoy has been deployed in Little Pioneer Bay, Orpheus Island, just off the research station in the central part of the Great Barrier Reef.

The buoy is configured as a sensor-float with a Campbell Scientific logger, a spread-spectrum radio for communicating with the base station (located near the Research Station) a surface mounted (60cm under the water surface) thermistor and an inductive modem to support a range of inductive sensors, initialy this will be a SeaBird SBE39 measuring temperature and pressure (depth).

The float is moored at the entrance to Little Pioneer Bay, just deep of the reef front and will be used to measure the water entering the bay with particular interest in warm water pushing up into the bay. The data will support work being done in the bay by James Cook University researchers.

The unit will be serviced every six months and will be used in the future for attaching new sets of sensors.

The buoy is one of two buoys and three relay-poles being deployed on Orpheus Island as part of the GBROOS Project. The design looks to measure the impact of warm water pushing in from the Coral Sea onto the reef flat at the northern end of the island, through the channel to Pelorus Island and around onto the land side of the island. These events are linked to coral bleaching and other climate impacts.

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 60cm below the water line. The buoys use a Campbell Scientific spread-spectrum radio to talk back to the base station located on Orpheus 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