Turtle Sense/Phase Two

Phase two is starting up.

People

• User:Dave -- Electrical engineering
• User:Sam -- Project manager / Software
• User:Tom -- Engineering support
• User:Eric -- Fundraising / Community liaison
• User:Chuck -- Documentation/fundraising
• VOLUNTEER NEEDED -- Web Design and data display

Overview

The plan for Phase Two is to create about 30 boards for installation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina during the Spring and Summer of 2013. The design is based around creating a sandwich of off the shelf boards (one for low power computing and the other for telemetry). Both of these boards will be plugged into headers on a custom mother board we will design. Every thing on the mother board will have through-hole components to make the board as easy as possible to assemble. The idea is to have a set of instructions on this web-site which will allow anyone who can do basic soldering to order the parts (from the manufacturers) and quickly assemble a board, install it on a nest (with approval of the appropriate agencies) to communicate with a website we will construct to monitor and collect the data from the nests.

Organization

Conference Call Sea Turtle Project Oct 18, 2013 2:15 pm Pacific time. Free Conference Call 213 493-0700, then 346192#

Participants: Tom Zimmerman (tzim@us.ibm.com), Sam Waltman (sam@waltman.net), Dave Hermeyer (dave@hermeyer.us); Eric Kaplan (ekaplan@hiocenter.org). Charles Wade (cwade@yahoo.com)

AGENDA

      Intro: Zimmerman, brief introduction of Wade  (present for first time).  Wade had sent email items prior to phone conference (attached).

1. Finances. It appears we need at least $15k for 30 units. Eric: NPS will do $50k/year for awhile. They now derive revenue from charges to drive on beach which may be the fund source. Available 2014 (Eric to follow up)? If so, this may cover our expenses next year?

2. Other Cities/Areas? Alabama-NASA engineer. Backend project perhaps for BBAFF proposal (Kaplan) for NC Coastal Recreational Fishing License Fund. Put eggs in cages?

Bald Head Island, NC. Large organization with strong funding

Audubon Voyager?

3. Web support Sam: SF person develop9ng mapping for satellite data, sent over internet, which might be useful.

Sam developing Nerd without Borders WIKI. Strong arguments for open source site which covers what we’ve developed/learned. Should cover such as teaching (best practices), devices, design experiences.

Long discussion on whether in addition to the public section there should be a private section (just this group). Private may be needed for legal interactions with future partners. Issue not resolved.

4. Engineering team, version 2 Sam and Tom. Discussion as to changes coming. Comments on need for a time line.

5. Radio version Sam has found volunteers who will possibly create this and perhaps assemble as well. Looking for inexpensive design

6. Funding Crowd funding (Wade suggestion attached). Sam has done two of these, noted they are a lot of work and require well-advertised buildup to an event with subsequent follow thru. Would require swag and effective donor stroking/communication. May be beyond our resources. Correct timing and correct dollar goals are critical if we proceed.

Eric: In NC Coastal Fishing grant proposal (Would be summer 2015 money). $100k in budget. Grant station, Center for Non-profit Excellence (Charlottesville, VA high schoolers working on proposals)?

DECA marketing programs?

Paradox: environmentalists and the “drive on beach” interests have a common goal in reducing the time needed for path to beach.

7. Other Groups with related goals Seaturtlehospital.org (Karen Beasley center, topsail island) Lew Browning (associated with Beasley? SeaTurtleConservancy.org

Many web sites.

8. Possible Swag List from Sam and Tom: Pool on hatching date; pool on tagged female turtles (GPS) return date for nesting. More??

9. Division of labor Eric: involvement of Hatteras Island Ocean Center non-profit; interface with NPS including actions at nest sites; interface with turtle groups., esp North Carolina

Dave/Sam: Engineering/electronic communications

Tom: Probe device design/construction

Chuck: admin, funding, searches for effective turtle web sites

10. Tom IBM availability. Percentage of time he can devote to this is set by IBM management policy.

Information distributed prior to conference call:

Sea Turtles 10-16-2013 Some topics for discussion on conference call 10-18-2013

Tom, Eric, Sam

Hi. I’ve been doing work mostly in background and wanted to ship this before our conference call. I’ve been working mostly on possible funding and volunteer resources while trying to educate myself on the projects. I had a nice discussion with Tom today so I’ve learned a bit more about the interactions in the group.

Some topics for information or possibly discussion. Note that I have not acted on any of these.

Possible funding- -especially for support for Summer 2013 devices I can do the work on these but will need some technical backup info on the projects and on turtle behavior plus general ideas of where you wish to focus and what the budget amounts would be.

1. I found an appealing website, www.crowdrise.org, which we might use. It was described in a Forbes article (Top 10 Crowdfunding ..” ) as a “do gooders site”. They have a very engaging style, which among other things says “CrowdRise is a crowdfunding platform for good. CrowdRise is about raising money for amazing causes and having the most fun in the world while doing it. CrowdRise is the official fundraising partner of the New York Marathon, Chicago Marathon and thousands of other events. The world's finest charities, such as Stand Up to Cancer, Robin Hood, American Red Cross, and the Clinton Global Initiative all choose CrowdRise for online fundraising. CrowdRise was named a Top 25 Global Philanthropist by Barron's, the most innovative fundraising platform by Mashable, and was nominated for a Webby for Best Philanthropic Website. Besides that, CrowdRise isn't that great.

They have the Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club foundation as active sites plus hundreds of other organizations (small and large). Charges seem to be a flat 3% of the transactions plus a 2.9% credit card processing fee. May be different if we go in as a charity (Eric’s?). Money can go to local charities (Eric’s ?). with easy access They walk you thru the enrollment and website process it seems but it would help to have artistic website expertise involved. Writeups are short. Their terms and conditions package is about 10 pages long from, as they put it, “our mean lawyer”-- which I haven’t digested

I’ve never worked with one of these, but obviously the goal is to somehow have enough publicity so people know about it . (bit more below under Other Resources). It is good to have a feedback of some type (small plastic turtles? T shirts?) Donor names can be listed plus they have a system of award heroes depending on how much is raised. Tom and I briefly discussed perhaps using SeaTurtle.org to positive effect for donors?

2. IBM On Demand Community. Internal corporate site, funds open about March, up to 2 K or so with minimal bureaucracy and quick decisions. An hour or less to do the proposal. Funds go to a charity (at least the many I’ve done). Rules change a bit year to year but bigger funds possible if lots of IBMers involved (will be easy to get, probably).

3. IBM IVOC grant—within Almaden, perhaps $1200, may be able to get a bit this year. They balance demands/vs. money in the pot.

Other Resources—haphazard order

In casual conversations, I’ve found the interest in this project to be very high.

a. Publicity: we can get some informal help and suggestions from IBM communications but they have to be very careful about corporate commitments in the government/political arena. We have two such experts in Almaden and one of my friends lauded the wife of one of them (she’s not an IBMer) who helped his high school robotics program get PR and perhaps some funding. Mike Ross, a scientist and former IBM communications person, now an independent writer, would help also I’m certain. b. UC Santa Cruz has a class/department on Wildlife Illustration. They also have a well known technical writing master’s program. Perhaps we can seed something there.? c. MIT has a January undergrad research period for undergrads that has an internal funding source…and they are pushing that program. No doubt other schools have something similar. Perhaps get seed funding there? d. In casual conversations (part of the basis for my comment on the interest)

     -one of my friends volunteered that his son has an advertising company and might be interested in doing pro-bono web and advertising
     -one of the Almaden postdocs at lunch got very excited—he’s interested in turtles of all types,  wants to send me lists of organizations, would like the project to extend to other turtles besides those in NC.
     -a local author of children’s books  knows good illustrators who might be interested
     -my son is starting an online business and has sampled website designers in  San Luis Obispo, CA—college town, and no doubt some of these would love to have their name on a worthwhile project.  Ditto Silicon Valley?
     

Organization In my discussion with Tom today I suggested he shift to me his admin work, from scheduling conference calls to whatever else. I can give it priority, and he should have as much time as possible on version 2 or 3 or whatever—just a thought. Maybe there are other ways I could help.

Cheers, chuck

Engineering

Components

Turtle egg sensor

This would be unchanged from the phase one design that uses plastic ping-pong balls (not good ping-pong balls, but cheap plastic knock offs) and a temperature/motion sensor pre-installed on a small circuit board (Qty 1 Price=$14.95). Assembly involves cutting a small slot in a ball, putting in some silicone caulk, inserting a sensor board attached to a cable into the caulk, and then filling the rest of the ball with caulk. A ball cut in half covers the slot and makes a thorough seal with the silicone.

Mother board

The mother board will be custom made and have two rows of headers for attaching a pre-fabricated processing board based on the TI MSP430 CPU and another two rows of headers for prefabricated telemetry boards. Each of these boards already have their own power regulators built in, but there needs to be an additional power regulator for the telemetry board on the mother board to regulate battery power down to the voltage required by the telemetry board. The regulator, headers, and other components on the mother board will all be through hole components that can be easily soldered to the mother board making it easy to assemble for anyone with basic electronic soldering experience (think hacker space events and high schoolers). The mother board will be approximately 2.5 inches by 1.9 inches. We can purchase 3 boards for $51 plus shipping. We might be able to cut each board in half (full size is 2.5 inches by 3.8 inches). This can be done with a hack saw. For larger production runs, we can get the boards pre-cut to the optimum dimensions and the price would be a little less per unit (about $7 each for a run of 30). Other components on the board should total under $15. Total cost per board $20 to $25 each.

Processing board

We've found a pre-assembled processing board made by Oilmex Ltd, that is based on the the ultra-low-power MSP430FR5739 processor by Texas Instruments. The MSP430-HFR5739 board has all the essential components needed. There is a header on the board for easy programming, and a connector which we can use for plugging in the cable to the turtle egg sensor. The MSP430FR5739 CPU has 16K Bytes program FRAM, 1024 Bytes SRAM, 10-bit A/D converter, 16-channel comparator with voltage reference generation and hysteresis capabilities which we can use for monitoring the battery voltage, three enhanced serial channels (capable of I2C, SPI, or UART protocols), hardware multiplier, real-time clock, five 16-bit timers, and more. The board also has power supply filtering capacitor and a 3.3V voltage regulator. There are two rows of headers for each pin of the microprocessor which we will use to plug this board into the mother board. The dimension of the board is 2.15" × 1.10". The boards cost only $19.53 qty 1 and are available from microcontrollershop.com.

Telemetry board

We plan on using plug in Terminus boards made by Janus. The Janus GSM865CF v1.1 GSM/GPRS Modem with GPS works with AT&T and T-mobile. For Verizon we can use the CDMA864CF v3.0. The boards are interchangeable and will plug into our motherboard. The cost is roughly $140 qty 1 and are from the manufacturer, Janus.

Other components

The only other components necessary are the cable and connector for the turtle egg sensor (a couple of bucks at most), an antenna for the telemetry board (GSM and GPS), which costs about $20 (perhaps more if reception is a problem). The units should operate for roughly 4 months running on 4 or 8 low self-discharge NiMH Batteries. The batteries and holder (TBD) which should cost less than $25. Also, anyone creating these devices will need the hardware necessary for programming the microprocessor (more about this later).

The cost of the total project should be around $200 to $250 per unit after start up expenses, and not counting telephony charges.