Absent: Holsom, C. Pendelton
Every group has $30,000 each plus there is a $20,000 pot (in reserve) since the project is a continuation rather than a new project.
Ann will send out copies of the recent paper and Cliff will give copies of his article to Ann. Cliff reminded people that the National Fishermanhas an article this week. Ken also made a video of the mixing experiment and gave it to Shelly Lauzon at WHOI. Bob will call Shelly for this video for inclusion on the web. Ann will send Bob a PDF file of the annual report for inclusion on the web as well. Ann asked that Bob check on the National Geographic video status with Shelly.
Rollie: The FleetLink videos are in Ann's Office. They will be mailed out. Each will get a copy and Bob will get a digital version for serving on the Web. It was also sent to ONR and NOPP program managers.
Cliff: Cliff asked when the new funding would be coming. He noted that not enough funding was provided for equipment failures. Ann suggested that Cliff buy a couple of APC brand UPS's to replace the ones currently in place since they are prone to breaking.
Money is in as of September 1. You can prime the pump by sending an invoice to UNH according to Ann since it is a continuation of the original project.
Ann mentioned that Bob Kohl wanted to come to the meeting to find out if anything will happen. His system is functional according to Cliff but Bob K. told us that the NetSensor was broken. There is a replacement sensor available which was the spare used during the tidal mixing experiment. The broken one is still with Bob K. It needs to get to Gary for repair. Neither the S&C nor Adventurer have a NetSensor. We agree that we want all three vesels fully functioning.
Gary: Fishermen need one point of contact and he (Gary) needs to know their plans ahead of time. Rollie reminded people that one needs to contact the Captains/owners himself since they are out a lot. Rollie suggested that Gary leave a phone message, "when you come in, please call." But Rollie reminded us that these people are busy, doing this as favor, and they've not got anything out of it yet. We agreed that Gary would designate Eric Leskoski as the person the fishermen call since he is usually the person who shows up. One can reach Eric at the main business number (617) 924-2708 or for FAXes, use (617) 924-2724. [E-mail access added October 31, 2001. His e-mail address is eleskoski@clearsat.net.]
The Adventuer needs a lot of work to get operational. Cam wants NetMinder, along with Vemco and NS. Once all are functioning, they can be compared. The Susan&Caitan will go into a schrimp season experiment at the end of December.
David: David would like to see conductivity data collected too during net tows.
Bob: He has not head anything further about the Irridium data communication option. During lunch, Bob contacted Omnet and later spoke with Bob Heinmiller. Bob H. said that they are ready for beta testing. He was willing to have FleetLink be a beta site since we satisfied the requirements of having sufficient on-site expertise and we were willing to share our experiences with others. Gary was worried about spending the time and effort on an area that was already working, namely data communications. He also reminded everyone that it would take Ken time to address the interface issues. The payoff comes in lower communications costs. Bob H. said that tests show there is a basic 2400 baud communications link, but with automatic compression, data rates of 10kbits/second were achieved. Both binary and ascii data could be transmitted. The cost structure is still being worked out, but Bob H. estimated that there would be a monthly fee which would work out to be about $.40 per message of up to 1000bytes per message. (Comsat charges $10 per 1000bytes.) Bob will continue to look into this option, consulting with Ken about the impact on him as well.
There were four (4) cruise track lines over 3-4 day period. The 111 cast began a line and went to the NE up to cast 120. Cast number 183 can be deleted according to Ken. Also, several casts were missing.
There is offset of data going up vs down on NS. Offsets are different between V and NS.
Ken said that the Vemco time is off by 27 - 28 hours.
What I meant to say was:
The vemco time has a ~ -27 hour offset. I had set the clock for the vemco
acquisition computer the day before in the lab and for some reason it had
slipped during transit and on-loading to the G&J. Standard operating
procedure is synchronize all clocks to WWV NIST broadcasts on 15 or 20 MHz,
but shakedown procedures were not completely established and done in the
hour or so to load the equipment at Hyannis and get underway.
The FleetLink /WheelHouse computer time stamped each netsensor file that was written. As Peter pointed out the file write time is recorded for the NS and the age of data can be subtracted from the write time in order to get the splash-in time for the NS. This splash-in time will correspond to the start tow time in the log with in a degree of tolerance. The start tow time and the ns file write time are derived from the same clock since they were done on the same computer.
In any case the NS is not offset by 27-28 hours in any casts: the vemco is in all casts.
For Station #1:
File name=:tow_info.001
File header=:tow_info
Tow_number=:111
Tow starting Date/Time/Year=:Sat Jul 28 06:37:18 2001
Tow ending Date/Time/Year=:Sat Jul 28 06:43:06 2001
Tow average depth=:50m
Comments=:Stn 1. offbank current. sunrise 5:20. 5:56 on station. #2
NS + VEMCO. Rigging lline. ready. away. NS nada. Vemco bin
40709. NS recast OK. UW for #2.
Time of NS file creation
28-Jul-2001 6:55:58a 4,524 gn010728.111
NS data record:
255,clearwater,26
3,450,2,2,60,31,2,1116 = 18.6 minutes this is the age of the data;
it also is close to the built in time delay.
19.76,91
19.79,94
Rounding to the minute, 6:56 - 19 minutes = 6:37 which is the tow starting and/or splash-in time. Exceptions to this can be found but that's how it's supposed to work. Any future thermocline work will probably call for the elimination of the 18 minute time delay.
Gary noted that the V and NS numbers go out of sync at some time. The Vemco responded more quickly than the NS to temperature changes.. They generally were in well mixed areas. The Vemco has courser resolution so one sees more jumping around. He found one problem where data were shifted from one cast to another. He still needs to resolve the time issues.
You need to be careful with the Vemco casts. The Vemco sensor apparently is turned on prior to going down. On some records there are long stretches of data before it starts recording. NetSensor only starts recording when it determines it is under the surface, unlike the Vemco. I determined some of the Vemco start times by matching up the casts starts on the Vemco and NetSensor. My limited investigation of the Vemco data is that the clock is all over the map at -27 hours.
Because the NetSensor is accurately tied to the cast times, I would recommend using those to adjust Vemco times. This is a time-consuming process.
Gary thought there was a 15-20 sec time constant for the existing NS system. He could use a thiner probe but then he runs a higher risk of the probe breaking. Data will need post processing. Who and where? Bob Kohl said he did fishing tows with the NS. We need to get the data from Bob K. There are quality assurrance issues. Gary suggested that we make the raw data available together with processed data since it is not ready for prime time. Bob would like to see an actual time stamp on the data to ease the post processing of the data.
Rollie wondered if we could get real-time depth vs temperature to help the fisherman such as the NetMinder software does. He asked how difficult it would be to transmit the data via accoustics vs the RF link at the end of the cast. Cam would like to try an accoustic sensor (NetMinder, $2,500) . There is a question of its sensor response time. Ken needs to look into whether it could be telemetred to the FleetLink system. Bob asked if these data were time stamped. David asked what the accuracy and precision of these alternate systems. Cliff thought that NetMinder was on a NMFS vessel. Cliff will contact NetMinder for the specs, find out about the data files; and if the result is positive, then Ann can authorize Cam to buy it. The goal would be to set up Cam with all three sensors and evaluate and compare them against each other. (Gary will have to repair the NetSensors so all three boats could have one.) The IMET sensor that David repaired also needs to get to Gary. Bob will get the IMET sensor boxed up and shipped to Gary.
Peter would like to complete his look at the Vemco unit to see if it can do the job. David will look into the specs (via Jim Manning) to see if it can last the 4-6 hour tows and collect the necessary data. David will also check with Jim if one can collect salinity data since his project said they would do it. A standard CTD could be used but it cannot be put on nets.
Ann reminded us that from first principals, the NetSensor provides temperture profiles vs. depth. The data needs to be displayed after the tow to the fisherman. Real-time display is [is not?] necessary.
We lost the momentum when we turned off the system. It was/is better to do hourly transmissions with hourly data. Ann placed a motion that we do hourly data transmitted at all times. The minute data will be collected and hand-carried to Bob for serving after the cruise. This was agreed to.
Cliff would like to see plots made available via the web. Bob said he could do it based on some work he is doing for the MVCO project. Peter also wanted to add a picture of where the fleetlink assets were located. It was suggested that Bob should develop the system showing the dot [20 mile square] and then get the data displayed when one touches the dot. Once this is available, give a demo too the captains/owners to show them what is available. At this point, see if they have a problem with what is displayed. It was decided to try this rather than take the last x-hours of data and smooth it to reduce the resolution. It was also suggested that more pink and purple be used on the web site.
Ann suggested three options:
Note that no boat name is displayed in any option. On a request basis, people can get all the data, including position and time information. However, the "public display" should not track the boat according to Cliff.
One question was whether to telemeter the water temperature/depth data. The general question is can a data file be transmitted on an as needed basis. We agreed that Ken would look into telemetry of these data. It was also asked whether on-board editing were possible.
We discussed whether FleetLink should buy a SeaBird CTD and give to David for use and maintenance. This was tabled for now.
The door is open for special projects through FleetLink. For example, make a proposal to the Northeast Consortium and let them know the FleetLink connection, within the Development Funds category.
EOS article
Marine Technology venue
Press coverage: the more the better.
Fish Forum: Rollie to sign us up - early March?
SeaKeeper is another contact. David asked what information was needed to take advantage of ECOHAB people's understanding. What types of information do the models need? Perhaps FleetLink equiped vessels could provide this information.
We decided that the repaired SST will go on the Adventurer.
Ken will work with the boats to get data to Bob G. routinely via regular mail. The captains will need training (possibly with the help of a .bat file) to create floppy disks of the data collected.
Since a new thermister would be more fragile on the NetSensor, we decided to stay with this thermister and look at the troll data to see if they are okay. If not, then Gary will change to faster thermisters.
We decided to send the working NetSensor to Cam. He wants to put it on the door without the collar. The general concensus was that would work.