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The first undersea eruption was detected in June 1993 by the NOAA Vents Program. | The NeMO Net system |
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NeMO
project EOI Program |
New
Millennium Observatory Network |
The system | |||
The camera on the seafloor unit takes a picture every 4 days and measures
temperature once an hour at a hydrothermally active area on the seafloor.
Data are sent acoustically through the water to a surface buoy, and then
via a geostationary satellite to a ground station for decompression and
distribution on the web. The camera mooring can receive additional commands,
such as taking an instaneous temperature or missing picture tile, via
the ORBCOMM satellite. The bottom
mooring consists of a camera, lights, temperature sensors, batteries,
acoustic modem, and a master controller. An aluminum pressure case with
an acrylic lens houses a Sony PAL video camera and a PC-104 computer with
a video frame grabber. On command from the master controller, one of two
150-watt lights are turned on and the camera generates an image that is
then broken into 64 tiles. Each tile is compressed by a factor of 35:1
using wavelet theory to yield a complete image of approximately 16K using
an 8 bit gray scale. Temperature is measured at two places in view of
the camera and at one place on the camera frame with titanium housed PRTs
cabled to the master controller. Data are transmitted from the bottom
package at 300 baud with an acoustic modem operating in the 8-13 kHz range.
The bottom system is powered for a one-year deployment with 564 alkaline
D cells. The system was deployed by free-falling the bottom package and
was moved into position with the ROV ROPOS. A green laser was mounted
on the system to aid in pointing the camera.
A 2.5m disk buoy is anchored very close to the camera and moored taut with
3/4 and 7/8 inch nylon line to keep a tight watch circle. A transducer for
the acoustic modem is mounted in the bridle of the buoy and electronics
and batteries are located in an instrument well. A microcontroller in
the buoy receives data from the acoustic modem and further compresses
and formats the data for transmission. A 40-watt transmitter and an omni-directional
antenna are used for the GOES data telemetry. A buffer representing one
tile (250 bytes) is sent every hour, except one transmission per day has
24 hourly values from the 3 temperature probes. Consequently, a new picture
is available every 4 days and temperature plots are updated daily. |
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Equipment suppliers | |||
Recognition of the following companies and their products does not constitute an endorsement by the government: Acoustic modems: Datasonics, Inc. Underwater lights:Deep Sea Power and Light: http://www.deepsea.com/ ROV ROPOS http://www.ropos.com |
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information| Credits US Department of Commerce | NOAA | PMEL | EOI Program Disclaimer |