ATtiny in a bottle

Would be good advertising/competition for a soft drinks company (not to throw in the sea, all those bottles..)

Imagine a "limited collectors edition" bottle, that had a flashing message when it was empty.

Make something a satellite can pick up at sea, then they might help as data on the trash-sargasso's.

I have a satellite modem that could send the location from a bigger bottle. Not so expensive!

I'm just throwing this out there for anyone to work on if they chose to. I'm nowhere near an ocean and have plenty of other projects to work on.

This would be a fascinating and challenging project to work on with all kinds of engineering decisions to make in order to produce something at very low cost that could remain at sea for years and still work upon landfall. For instance, would the transparent PET plastic jar (wide mouthed for interior access and easiest type to get as it is the most common food packaging plastic) become sufficiently opaque over years of UV exposure to interfere with the solar cell output to a fatal extent? Would algae accumulation (if any) do the same and would there be any commonly available product that could be used on the exterior of the plastic jar to prevent or reduce it?

The internal components would need to be mounted securely in a way that could withstand potentially years of high-g loads experienced within storm waves, preferably without any penetrations through the wall of the jar. What commonly available adhesives should be used for that and for encapsulation of the ballast (ex., BBs or lead shot). Heat due to solar insulation would be an issue to deal with (use Al foil inside jar as solar shielding above waterline except, of course, in front of solar cell). Hail impacts on the somewhat flexible skyward wall of the jar would need to be considered to avoid damage to the solar cells(s) (ex., recess solar cell(s) from skyward wall). And on and on.

The design should use through-hole components to allow easy kit assembly. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any accelerometer ICs in DIP form for wave motion sensing and landfall detection. I'd suggest using a UV LED as a UV photodiode as shown in my illustration below. Below the waterline, UV would be low. Once landed, the UV detected would be much higher.

UV resistant text would be used for the message and the jar would be marked in some way with something like "Message in a bottle" in several languages. Which languages? English, Spanish, French and Chinese?

Here's the concept:

http://www.slickpic.com/s/zjGMiyNNDOLGjj/_201210261017/photo?view=2369211#2369211

sbright33:
I have a satellite modem that could send the location from a bigger bottle. Not so expensive!

Wouldn't need to be as long as the led faces up and always the same color. There are satellites with spectrometers and after enough lights show up the measure would be analog.

Really it seems that a lot of trash accumulates in these places, if they knew how many bottles got tossed in then some data on roughly how many got into the mess might be useful.

Chagrin:
As he mentions you could run an ATTiny for a year on a couple AA batteries (2200mah batteries / .2ma = 458 days) and even the smallest solar cell would power it "forever". Not sure how you get a solar cell in a bottle though :wink:

Roll it up and stick it down the neck...

Far-seeker:

Chagrin:
As he mentions you could run an ATTiny for a year on a couple AA batteries (2200mah batteries / .2ma = 458 days) and even the smallest solar cell would power it "forever". Not sure how you get a solar cell in a bottle though :wink:

Roll it up and stick it down the neck...

Or simply use a wide mouth PET plastic jar as show in my concept jpg linked to above. That would make the unit very easy to build as it provides easy access to the interior of the seagoing vessel.

Winston:

Far-seeker:

Chagrin:
As he mentions you could run an ATTiny for a year on a couple AA batteries (2200mah batteries / .2ma = 458 days) and even the smallest solar cell would power it "forever". Not sure how you get a solar cell in a bottle though :wink:

Roll it up and stick it down the neck...

Or simply use a wide mouth PET plastic jar as show in my concept jpg linked to above. That would make the unit very easy to build as it provides easy access to the interior of the seagoing vessel.

Well sure if you want to do things the easy way...:wink:

Discarded plastic is a real problem. Here is a project where there are so many flip-flops washing up on an Indian Ocean beach people can specialise in re-cycling them!!! Not only does that give a feel for the scale of the waste problem but the level of poverty in many areas;
http://www.swahili-imports.com/home/si3/page_5146/uniqueco__the_flip_flop_project.html

I don't know about you but every beach/coast I go to is plagued by this problem.
How does so much waste end up in the sea?

Have you heard about the concentration in the Pacific Ocean?

My friend has been studying it for years. Want to know the truth about it? Check out the images online.

radman:
How does so much waste end up in the sea?

It is because -average- consensus awareness of trash has the garbage pail emptying into a black hole. Same way that water comes from faucets and disappears down another black hole, and electric just comes out of walls.
And whenever something is different there is upset until put back the same but don't remind people of what they don't want to know. The issue is solved for the majority through ignorance and denial, it is not enough to change an election so only gets lip service.

Hey, pollution's been an issue for me since 1969. I'm used to being in the minority.
Someone should give rich kids 'Jersey Beach Whistles' just to slap their parents heads.

Well then I guess this project should probably use a relatively thick-walled glass bottle or jar, especially non-colored glass. While there is still an issue of some creature accidentally eating it, a glass vessel if broken up would eventually be turned into small pieces of glass. Common non-colored glass is almost three quarters silica (SiO2), similar to a lot of the natural sands, along with some sodium oxide (Na2O) and lime (CaO). So even though it probably won't break chemically, if it does there's nothing involved that would be innately poisonous in small amounts. Also unlike polymers, even small piece of glass wouldn't stay suspended in the water column indefinitely. Instead it will act much like small rocks or sand, depending upon the size.

I'm certainly not in favor of adding to the oceanic pollution problem, but if this device is never found again it looks like a glass container would pose less long-term problems than a plastic one. Of course that's not taking into account whatever is inside the container...

I appreciate the concern many here have about polluting the oceans, but considering the absolutely vast quantities of waste both intentionally and unintentionally dumped into them already, the oceans aren't going to notice the addition of a few wide-mouthed jars with Arduinos in them.

So what's stopping you from getting started with your project? What's your question?

There are vast amounts of garbage spread out in our oceans. But the Pacific Gyre is a myth. I mean it is nothing like these pictures.
https://www.google.com/search?q=pacific+gyre&tbm=isch

Go for it! Start designing! Let us know.

There's no dense spots where garbage is clumped up like some of those pictures show?
Did they fake those shots?

The images are mostly propaganda. Yes it is bad. Millions of tons of garbage. Nearly invisible small pieces. When you use a net to filter out all the pieces there are grams per gallon of seawater on the surface. But it looks nothing like those pictures out in the middle of the ocean. When you swim in the worst part, the water appears blue and beautiful! Other than the occasional truck tire.

Anyone building an Arduino in a bottle?

sbright33:
Anyone building an Arduino in a bottle?

I'm not, because as I said in my original post, "I'm just throwing this out there for anyone to work on if they chose to. I'm nowhere near an ocean and have plenty of other projects to work on."