Lander Lab Salutes Ocean Lander Suppliers

Designing and building ocean landers is simplified by close collaboration with a stratum of key suppliers whose products meet the challenges of the deep sea.

Herewith we highlight some of our favorites.

Releases

EdgeTech <Edgetech.com>:  Among their many release systems is the circular BART board (Burnwire Acoustic Release Transponder). (See Figure 1.) The roughly 6” diameter board fits perfectly into a 10” sphere (Glass: Nautilus Marine Service; GPA: Global Ocean Design). The low frequency transmission sends complex command codes reliably up to 16km distant. End users can request an extended command suite that will provide up to 5 total unique burnwire commands. Burnwires: Global Ocean Design <globaloceandesign.com>. Two sizes: rated 125-lbs or 250-lbs. Mounts hold burnwires rigid in all axes except one; a single lever mount design supports 1,250-lbs, and a double-lever mount design holds 5,000-lbs. Ping on Rob Morris <[email protected]> for more info.

SubSeaSonics <subseasonics.com>:  Low cost, shallow water, single release, acoustic and countdown timers.  Not heavy duty, but good for floats and light coastal work.

Housings

Nautilus Marine Service <vitrovex.com/en>: Famous for Vitrovex Glass housings used for both buoyancy and housings, some rated for up to 12km. (See Figure 2.) (U.S. rep: Brock Rosenthal, Ocean Innovations, <[email protected]>).

Prevco <prevco.com>: Provides a broad selection of subsea housings, both custom and standard off-the-shelf designs. They also offer comprehensive pressure testing services.

Blue Robotics <bluerobotics.com>: Low-cost, shallow water housings for experimentalists and hobbyists. They have earned a place in the mix.

Global Ocean Design <globaloceandesign.com>: Glass reinforced polyamide spheres with purge port and 3 connectors fittings, plus interior mounting ring and plate, rated 1km and 2km.  Deck Purge Box moisture removal system with vacuum leak test lowers interior relative humidity to prevent condensation with no HazMat.

Figure 2. A Nautilus Marine Service 10” Vitrovex sphere is shown with multiple penetrators and a self-sealing purge port. A circular frame can be bonded to the interior of one of the hemispheres as a mount for electronics. (Photo courtesy of Nautilus Marine Service.)

Galvanic Time Releases

Best for releasing a tethered float on a seafloor package as the target release time and actual release time may vary by several hours, plus or minus. Advantages are they are cheap, small, and always work.

Neptune Marine Products <neptunemarineproducts.com/galvanic-timed-releases.php>

International Fishing Devices <underseareleases.com>

Flotation

Trawlworks <trawlworks.com>: Distributors of Atlantic Floats <atlanticfloats.com/en/floats/> polyamide deep sea fishing floats. Available in various diameters, some with lugs, others with center holes for mounting. (See Figure 3.) The 15% glass-filled polyamide 10-2100-NG provides 11.8-lbs of buoyancy to 2,100m.  Rugged, impact resistant. Chat with Steve Taber <[email protected]>.

Deepwater Buoyancy <deepwaterbuoyancy.com>: Manufacturers of syntactic foam in standard or custom shapes.

Figure 3. Trawlworks/Atlantic Floats offers injection molded plastic spheres for low-cost buoyancy to depths as great as 2km. (Photo courtesy of Atlantic Floats.)

Connectors and Cables

SubConn <https://www.macartney.com/connectivity/subconn/>: They got very popular when Impulse and SeaCon stopped selling to small customers, which made for some unexpected delivery problems. They have worked hard to correct those. Great quality. Drop a note to Beto Campos <[email protected]>.

Dragonfish Manufacturing <https://dragonfishmfg.com>: Rubber molded connectors, and custom cable assemblies, low minimums, “high quality and expediency are our top priorities”.  Contact Stan Logan <[email protected]>.

Blue Trail Engineering <bluetrailengineering.com/>: Cobalt underwater connectors, thrusters and other technology for experimentalists and hobbyists. They built and deployed a solar powered ASV that traveled west from California 13,322km across the Pacific to Papua. Awesome.

South Bay Cable <southbaycable.com>: Full-on custom cable shop with testing equipment including an Optical Time-Domain Reflectometer, Impedance Analyzer, High Voltage Test Facility, Environmental Ovens, and Hydrostatic Pressure Test facilities.  Small cable runs are possible.  Many standard cable designs are in stock.

Anekonnect <anekonnect.io>: Cool subscription-based application for designing and diagramming underwater cables.  The company maintains a parts library of over 10,000 pieces from pretty much everybody.

Sensors and Electronics

RBR <rbr-global.com>: small, compact, rugged, reliable, with options for shallow to very deep, that fit in hand-deployable landers. Instruments measure temperature, depth, salinity, dissolved gases, pH, and other parameters. (See Figure 4.) Access and manipulate data through a single piece of software: Ruskin. Compatible with PCs and Macs, it is easy to install, simple to use, and handles deployment, download, and data display in one place.

Star-Oddi <https://www.star-oddi.com/>: Small, high performing loggers for aquatic environments. Sensors measure temperature, depth (pressure), salinity (conductivity), tilt, and magnetic field strength. Some of the sensors are rated for hadal depths.

Jasco <https://www.jasco.com>: Autonomous Multichannel Acoustic Recorder Generation 4 is a customizable, fully autonomous underwater sound and data recorder. The system comes with removable memory and replaceable battery packs, making it easy to refurbish and redeploy to depths up to 6700m as payload on an ocean lander. Waveform Audio File Format (WAV) and Comma-separated values (CSV) files are saved to Secure Digital (SD) cards, directly readable by a computer.

Sea-Bird Scientific <https://www.seabird.com/>: An old-hand at oceanographic data collection, Sea-Bird Scientific delivers accurate and reliable CTDs, sensors, and software that empower scientists to collect precise data in the harshest environments.

Unisense Scientific <unisense.com/products/field-datalogger-mini-system/>: The Field DataLogger Mini System is a self-recording in situ sensor package with deep sea rating to 6,000 m and long battery life measure H₂S, O₂, pH, Redox, H₂, and NO. The Field DataLogger Mini enables studies of unique analytes, including studies utilizing fast responding sensors (seconds), giving the opportunity to monitor and obtain unique data in a cost-effective way.

Mission Robotics <missionrobotics.us>: Custom electronic and software solutions for unique marine applications. Mission Robotics leverages their marine EE expertise to offer reliable, rigorously-tested software and hardware products that work across a wide range of undersea vehicles. We understand the pain points of product development and have created solutions that will allow companies to focus on the big picture of growing and running their business.

Figure 4. RBR duet⁴ and solo⁴ offer exchangeable sensors to measure Temperature (T), Pressure (D), Optical Dissolved Oxygen (ODO), Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR), Radiometer (rad), Turbidity (Tu), and Chlorophyll-a (chl-a). The compact date logger provides flexible measurement schedules, USB-C download, standard sampling up to 2Hz, and optionally up to 32Hz, options to 10,000m, long deployments, in a compact and lightweight housing. (Photo courtesy of RBR.)

Samplers

General Oceanics <https://www.generaloceanics.com/>:  Niskin bottles for water sampling and animal collection.  Held open by a burnwire (Global Ocean Design), and triggered by a timer or acoustic signal.

Cameras and Lights

WASSOC <wassoc.com>:  WASSOC offers the Autonomous Recording Camera (ARC), a 6000m -rated, stand-alone subsea HD imaging system featuring Wi-Fi connectivity and long-term deep sleep capability. For deepwater or night imaging, the ARC connects to the Subsea LED Light (SLL). A programmable intervalometer controls the time lapse series. (See Figure 5.)

Deep Water Exploration <dwe.ai>: synchronized multi-camera self-recording system provides 360° panorama of the seafloor around a lander. Their 7-element sapphire lens is meticulously designed to eliminate distortion and chromatic aberrations caused by water diffraction. Cameras are about as large as an egg. Stereo imaging system are also available.  Housings rated from 400m to 11km.

Figure 5.  The ARC (Autonomous Recording Camera) is Wassoc’s full ocean rated, stand-alone, subsea imaging system. Powered by an internal rechargeable Li-ion battery, the ARC can be programmed for a wide variety of subsea imaging missions. Paired with Wassoc's Subsea LED Light, the ARC can autonomously illuminate and capture HD footage and imagery in ocean depths up to 6,000m. (Photo courtesy of Wassoc.)

Recovery Beacons

Xeos <xeostech.com>: Iridium GPS beacons, VHF Beacons, Argos beacon, flashers, and hand-held locators.

MetOcean Telematics/Novatech <metocean.com/environment/novatech-tracking-and-monitoring/>: NOVATECH beacons are designed to last in the harshest of ocean environments, and come in the form of flashers, radio beacons and satellite beacons.

Supplies

3M <3m.com>: With its 33 black-tape, Scotchcast 2131 casting compound, and acrylic structural adhesives, 3M has been a quiet but powerful member of the marine industry.

Lander Systems

Devologic <https://develogic.com/product/modular-seafloor-lander/>: Produces a compact, modular seabed observatory enabling long-term, autonomous environmental monitoring with flexible sensor integration, hybrid communication, and deployment without ROVs or divers.

Global Ocean Design <globaloceandesign.com>:  Multiple vehicle sizes including Picolander (2 x10” spheres), Nanolander (3x10” spheres), Nanolander-13 (3x13” spheres), and Omega Lander (2x17” spheres).  Many options and accessories. (See Figure 6.)

KC-Denmark <www.kc-denmark.dk>: Lander frames, sensors, cameras and lights, samplers, and biological incubation systems.

Unisense Scientific <unisense.com>: Manufactures the MiniChamber Lander System, designed for water chamber measurements with multiple microsensors (O₂, H₂, N₂O, pH, H₂S) mounted in the chamber lid. 300m and 6000m platforms are available. The MiniChamber Lander does not have flotation or an anchor release system, but there is provision to add them. Their DeepSea Lander System is a fully functional free fall lander system, built in collaboration with KC-Denmark (above).

Figure 6.  Global Ocean Design’s ocean lander family, left-to-right, Picolander, Picolander-XL, Nanolander, Nanolander-13, and the Omega Lander. Landers are depth rated for 1-km to 12km, depending on spheres, and have payload capacity to suit multiple mission requirements. (Photo courtesy of Global Ocean Design).

“Lander Lab” is a hands-on column of Ocean Lander technologies and strategies, a unique class of unmanned undersea vehicles, and the people who make them. It is meant to serve the global ocean lander community in the manner of Make Magazine and other DIY communities.

Comments on this article, or suggestions for other stories of interest are welcome. Ocean lander groups are encouraged to write in about their work. Please feel free to contact Kevin Hardy <[email protected]>.

Thanks for reading.