Running an Undersea, Robotic Laboratory on a Fixed Energy Budget
summary
A moored Linux-controlled lab performs chemical and genetic assays in situ, drawing water through 132 filter pucks and producing DNA-spot images for species ID. Early systems run ~30 days; evolution reduces idle CPU from ~2.5 W to 0.25 W idle Linux, adds custom low-power servo controllers, radio pager-standby trick, and uses two 3 kWh D‑cell packs (≈6 kWh battery pack) to reach year‑long deployments. Tradeoffs include limited reagents, serial-link choices (RS232/RS422/USB over Cat5), and avoided hibernation due to kernel/flash limits.
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chapters (26)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:10Monterey Bay Aquarium
- 2:59Monterey Bay
- 3:58The Group
- 4:42Red Tides
- 6:53Filter Pucks
- 7:44How it works
- 8:39Robotics
- 9:49ESP
- 11:15Deployment Modes
- 12:29Alkaline Batteries
- 13:33Servo Motors
- 15:28When to Take Samples
- 20:42Woods Hole
- 22:40Take Home Message
- 23:23The Stretch Hose
- 25:06CPU to RAM
- 27:18Oceanographic Systems
- 28:03Electronics
- 29:01Final mooring
- 31:13Cat5 USB extender
- 33:41USB power management
- 34:35Energy harvesting
- 35:32Recap
- 36:24Questions
- 44:52Sampling
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