October 23, 2011 / dw / Comments Off on Demobilization and Remobilization of the Hugh R Sharp
Summer is an especially busy time for research vessels. The UNOLS fleet is making increasing use of containerized portable lab vans to shave some time and effort off of offloading the science party from one cruise and loading up the next mission and their gear. They also increase the flexibility of the research vessels by giving them the option to add additional science capabilities and facilities to vessel users. Options include adding:
Dry Labs
Wet Labs
Isotope Labs
Clean Labs
Cold Labs
Additional Berthing
This is a time lapse that we shot of the RV Hugh R Sharp returning from a multi-week scallop survey, unloading one lab van and then loading two more fresh ones before fueling up (both diesel and food) and departing on the next mission. Enjoy!
One of the highlights of going to the RVTEC meeting is getting to hear about some of the cool projects that are underway at the various institutions. One talk that caught my attention was the SUDS system, an NSF sponsored project that was given by the techs at Oregon State University.
I talked David O’Gorman and Toby Martin into doing a quick rundown on their SUDS system on camera during one of the breaks. SUDS is an acronym for the Ships Underway Data System, which consists of software and two data acquisition boards that they designed in-house – one analog and one digital. Each board can be programmed with metadata about the sensors that are attached to them. When the boards are plugged into the ships network they broadcasting XML data packets which include both data and metadata about the data via UDP for a back-end data acquisition to capture and store. For redundancy, there can be multiple acquisition systems on the network as well I’m told.
The data acquisition cards can be either powered directly or via POE (Power Over Ethernet). They can also supply power to the sensor if needed. The digital cards can accept RS232 and RS485. The analog has 4 differential input channels which can do 0-5v on two of the channels and 0-15v on the other two and range from 600Hz to 20kHz input signals.
Their website has links to a PDF of the presentationthey did at the 2010 UNOLS RVTEC meeting as well as various examples of data packets that the system broadcasts. Definitely something that could be quite useful to handle the ever-changing data acquisition needs on today’s research vessels. I look forward to learning more about the SUDS system in the days to come.
(Acronym Police: UNOLS = University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System and RVTEC = Research Vessel Technical Enhancement Committee).
For those unfamiliar with RVTEC, it is a committee organized around 1992 to “provide a forum for discussion among the technical support groups of the National Oceanographic Fleet” in order to “promote the scientific productivity of research programs that make use of research vessels and oceanographic facilities and to foster activities that enhance technical support for sea-going scientific programs” as listed in Annex V of the UNOLS charter. Membership is extended to UNOLS member institutions but “Participation shall be open to technical and scientific personnel at UNOLS and non-UNOLS organizations”.
The meeting agenda was pretty intense and we were pretty much straight out from Monday through Friday afternoon. There were a lot of scary smart people in the room doing some pretty amazing things in support of science operations at their respective institutions. I tried to compile a list of Tech Links on the ResearchVessels.org site to make it easier to find some of the various resources that were discussed at the meeting. I did the same thing at last years RVTEC meeting in Seattle but some additions and corrections were needed based on feedback from the members. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to obtain funding to attend next years meeting and perhaps the upcoming Inmartech meeting (look for a post on Inmartech soon).
I shot some video, made some fantastic contacts and had some interesting discussions at this years RVTEC meeting. If all goes smoothly, I’ll have a couple of new blog entries online this week to help share some of the wealth of knowledge.
We recently had guests come down to take a tour of the Lewes campus and the Research Vessel Hugh R Sharp. One of the guests was wheelchair-bound and was limited to only seeing the main deck of the ship as getting to the rest of the ship would have required going up and down stairs. The Sharp has accommodations for handicapped scientists, but they are pretty much limited to the main deck. This limits their access to just the aft working deck, the wet and dry labs, the galley and the conference room. The wheels started turning during that tour on how to share the rest of the technological awesomeness of the Sharp with others. I decided to take my trusty $100 video camera in hand and record a video tour of the ship for those that are unable to navigate the stairs, and for classrooms and visitors who just can’t make the trek to Lewes for a tour. It’s a tad long, running just over 40 minutes or so, but it covers almost the entire ship. Enjoy!
Many thanks to Captain Jimmy Warrington for taking time to do a whirlwind tour just prior to a science mission – as you can tell from the video, he’s a natural at relaying information about the RV Hugh R Sharp and its science capabilities.
Detailed drawings showing deck layouts and profiles of the Sharp can be found the RV Hugh R Sharp landing page, which includes PDFs of:
