How many times have you been standing on a dock or a bridge or even out on a kayak or large research vessel and found yourself wondering what the temperature, sound and salinity profile was for the water beneath you? Well, you need wonder no more!
Here’s the last of the videos from the BEST Workshop last week. I talked with Chris from YSI about their new product the portable “Castaway CTD”. Just a tad larger than your standard handheld GPS, the Castaway CTD is a battery operated unit that allows you to do on-the-spot CTD casts at depths up to 100 meters. Chris did a quick rundown of the unit and its operations and then we stepped inside to see what software they are supplying to pull the data off the units, manipulate it and export it for use. Again the venue was quite noisy, so my apologies for the poor sound quality.
Specs for the unit are available on the YSI site, just click on the “Specifications” tab. The unit runs on two AA batteries, which they claim will run the unit for over 40 hours. Communications with the unit are via an internal BlueTooth radio and the unit ships with a tiny USB BlueTooth dongle for you to use in your computer. The recorder comes with 15MB of storage, which they claim will store over 750 casts. It contains a built-in GPS so that you can get a geographic fix on your location within 10 meters and it will record the following:
- Conductivity
- Pressure
- Temperature
- GPS
- Salinity (derived)
- Sound Speed (derived)
A PDF of the whitepaper for the unit can be downloaded here.