Evening All,
With 2018 winding down we are starting to plan for 2019 as I’m sure most of you are…
As ever we are looking to try some new things along side the old faithful activities that make up our training plan.
I’m researching the ins and outs of a tracking project.
Basics would be to launch a bottle into the ocean and track its journey. (we would be looking into enviro friendly ways of doing this as we really don’t want to add to ocean pollution).
Has anyone tried anything similar, is there a reasonably cost friendly way of doing this iereal time tracking?
Not so easy, as most GPS trackers rely on a connection via wi-fi (if in a building), blue tooth / 'phone signal. Not many 'phone masts in the middle of the ocean.
Also, you would need a very long-life power source in order to cope with months (years?) at sea.
There are “marine” trackers but they need to be bulkier to transmit to a satellite.
Also, there are trackers designed for “species” tracking, but no idea of battery life.
Sailing trackers and emergency beacons have to be registered with the Marine and Ciastguard Agency and are far too expensive to put in a bottle and throw in the sea!!!
Still involves some engineering, GPS tracking via a cheap mobile phone is a great option, and there is a lot to think about. We are currently planning this for January for our cadets engineering project.
The ones I looked at were not emergency beacons / PLB, etc (which do have to be registered), merely position / security / reporting devices directly back to the “owner.” It wouldn’t be “integrated” into the LRIT / AIS real-time ship tracking systems.
Having a bottle know where it is is very simple - something like an Arduino and a GPS module will be about £20-30.
The problem is having it share that information with you - by the time it’s in the middle of the Altlantic you’re limited to HF transmission bouncing off the ionosphere or SATCOMs, neither of which will be easy, cheap or compact.
