Visitors Attend Underwater Data Harvesting Demonstrations (UK)

On the 22nd October at the OceanLab facility in Aberdeenshire, WFS welcomed 50 visitors to a set of demonstrations across 3 sessions in the University’s test tank.

The demonstrations showed how data can be harvested from a number of underwater sensors using a wireless-enabled underwater vehicle. For this set of demonstrations, the vehicle was a VideoRay Pro4 eyeball ROV, integrated with S100, the wireless datalogger from WFS. The Pro 4 ROV can easily accommodate lightweight instrumentation so the S100 is simply attached to the vehicle using standard data communications interfaces without compromising buoyancy or hydrodynamics. Once the system is submerged and piloted near the data source, the wirelessly retrieved data is either sent to the surface real time via the ROV’s umbilical or can be logged in the s100’s internal memory.

The visitors were shown how the ROV could interrogate different nodes in a network of underwater pressure sensors, and shown a WiPS node, the integrated wireless pressure solution (with inbuilt display) to reduce cost and complexity of pipeline commissioning. There was also a demonstration of an S100 datalogger integrated with an Octans 3000 (gyroscope) from iXBlue harvesting wireless orientation data. The VideoRay was shown flying up to Viewtooth, WFS’s wireless camera with pan-tilt-zoom function, and wirelessly activating the camera to start filing underwater. Visitors were also shown video material from a recent Viewtooth case study.

WFS staff were on hand to answer questions, and attendees had the chance to get some “hands-on” time with the equipment.

Feedback from the visitors on the format and content was very positive:

“The presentation was good and the demonstration perfect for me to see the equipment in operation”

“I liked the open format, giving us the opportunity to discuss relevant topics, both with WFS staff and other visitors”

“The demo was a big improvement on a PowerPoint presentation, and the opportunity to meet various members of the team was extremely useful”.

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Press Release, November 07, 2013; Image: VideoRay