Luke Metcalfe
MarINe Internet Of Nodes Specification (MINIONS)
June 2019 - October 2019
As IoT technologies have advanced, scientists have begun to use them extensively in the field of marine environment monitoring. However, these technologies and the platforms, designs and standards used in marine-monitoring networks are widely varied, making it difficult for systems to cooperate, and for designers to collaborate. Deploying technologies in harsh marine environments poses further difficulties, and so there was a call for standardisation in the sector.
To address these issues, this project aimed to define a common electrical, mechanical, operational and communication specification for IoT marine monitoring devices. Once the specification had been defined, two prototypes were designed and built according to the specification. The system comprised of a marine buoy located at sea, a base station on land, and a nearby server.
Buoy
The buoy consisted of a discarded ring buoy for a floating platform with an internal plate, onto which the electronics could be mounted. The electronics were placed inside waterproof enclosures made out of PVC pipe fittings and a 3D-printed bracket to attach the enclosure to the plate. The buoy was equipped with temperature and turbidity sensors, an ESP32 microcontroller, a power supply and management module, and a wireless communications module.
Base Station, Server and User Interface
Data was transmitted from the buoy to the base station via LoRaWAN. The base station displayed data on an OLED screen and interacted with the server using the MQTT protocol to upload data to an online user interface. Through the interface, users could view all data graphically and receive status updates. The interface also gave the user a certain level of control, as it was possible to change the sampling period and restart the buoy remotely.
Deployment
The base station was set up at my house in Hout Bay, Cape Town, while the buoy was deployed 1.5km away, anchored on the far side of the bay. The buoy was deployed, monitored and tested for roughly 24 hours before being retrieved. All data was stored for subsequent analysis.
Results and Conclusions
The system was successfully able to gather, transmit, display and store ocean data. This occurred from a node out at sea, to a node on land, and to a user interface, where it could be viewed on any device within the local network. The system was able to give regular updates, and a degree of remote control was achieved.
The success of the system validates the Specification, which will bring uniformity and interoperability to IoT marine monitoring networks. It has introduced standards based on known standards and industry best practices and will aid the sharing of designs, reuse of modules and cooperation between networks. This will ensure devices are suited for deployment at sea and will accelerate development and advances in the field.
Want to read more?
All project files, including code, schematics and documentation are available at the project's Github repository:
https://github.com/LukeMet/MINIONS.git
The final report and MINIONS Specification are available below: