Afternoon,
I’m a PhD student in Hawai’i and I have been tinkering with arduino for awhile now - mostly building data loggers modified from Edward Mallon’s designs via the Cave Pearl Project.
Today I was given a captured sounder buoy, it’s an M3i from Marine Instruments. Long story short these things are attached to illegal fish attracting devices (FADs) and they report back to the ship the biomass of tuna beneath the FAD using a 50/200 kHz echosounder.
Now that I have this thing, I’d like to repurpose it to do some good in the world. From what I can tell it uses the company’s proprietary software, but I’m hoping to find a wiring diagram and patch in somehow. Worse case, I’m hoping to scrap the board but reuse components and turn it into my own monitoring buoy.
Components I can see right off the bat:
- Ublox GPS module
- 50/200 kHz echosounder
- Water temperature sensor
- Iridium satellite module (I don’t plan on using it, data plans are too expensive). I’ll probably go cellular or wireless mesh.
- Fancy solar panels
- Giant battery pack
My Question: Assuming I cannot find a copy of the company’s closely-guarded software, any suggestions on how I might interface with the components short of stripping them off the board? I’d like to patch in directly to the board with an arduino if at all possible - hoping there is a testing/QC port open.