Power on Sh3d

Waves In Ice

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Waves-In-Ice (WII) are custom wave buoys deployed in the Arctic and Antarctic on sea-ice floes. Results from their long-running deployments have been published in Nature.

Dashboard — positions

Dashboard — single capture

Battery Management

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sh3d has built and managed battery systems for two decades — from lead-acid solar installations down to tiny embedded systems running on a single AA cell for years.

The WII wave buoys sleep for years and run in full-capture mode for months, automatically switching between capture, low-power and sleep modes to maximise longevity, reliability and recoverability.

Battery management is done at a low level: higher-level CPU loads and power drains are progressively shut down so GPS and communications can continue running, allowing a device to be located even when its main systems have failed.

MPPT

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In 2010 Sh3d designed a tiny MPPT to charge lithium-ion batteries from solar panels mounted on wave buoys deployed in very cold conditions. Battery management included temperature control and MPPT across multiple panels facing different directions (due to the physical design of the buoy).

Lithium batteries don’t handle low temperatures well — non-rechargeable alkaline cells are the best choice for extreme cold. Combining MPPT, careful battery and temperature monitoring, and fall-back alkaline cells, the buoys ran for many months even with rechargeable Li-ion packs.

Satellite

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Satellite Communications

Useful for small amounts of data from places nothing else can reach.

Examples

Wave buoys

Antarctic and Arctic wave-buoy telemetry via Iridium — see Waves In Ice.

Farm sensors

Water tanks, weather stations and other remote rural monitoring.