3 ms·
> Duncan and Davies actually cobbled together two generations of electronic bottles. Their first generation of devices, the ones that sailed along the Ganges, h
by blueblisters 5y ago
> Duncan and Davies actually cobbled together two generations of
electronic bottles. Their first generation of devices, the ones that
sailed along the Ganges, had plenty of cell towers to ping along the
way, so a SIM card would do. But the researchers also wanted to see
how plastic bottles might behave once they get to the ocean. So they
outfitted a second generation with GPS. Here they took inspiration
from their prior work tracking sea turtles: GPS works great on the
open ocean, far away from any cell service. (Their designs are open
source, so any plastic researcher can build their own, and even
improve upon the system.)
So cellular networks in the earlier system doubled as a localization + communication system. GPS is useful only for localization - I assumed they use satellite for actually communicating with and tracking the bottle?
- netsharc 5y ago> I assumed they use satellite for actually communicating with and tracking the bottle? I was going to write maybe they just get the data from bottles that make it close to shore and to a cell antenna, and if a significant percentage don't call back, then they could assume the currents take them out to sea. But the diagram of the bottle credits "ARRIBADA INITIATIVE", and https://arribada.org https://arribada.org says: > We’ve interfaced our Horizon GPS board with our new Argos ARTIC R2 transmitter to get you up and running quickly, compatible with next generation ARGOS-4 satellites and the future Kineis constellation of nanosatellites. Geez, I thought sat com would need big hardware, but it seems they've got it on a tiny board: https://www.cls-telemetry.com/argos-solutions/argos-products/modems/artic-chipset/#Open-Source-Reference-Design https://www.cls-telemetry.com/argos-solutions/argos-products...