I worked during summer 2020 at Ocean Networks Canada, a company that streams real-time data collected from instrument arrays placed on the ocean floor. They have a backbone underwater cable that all the arrays connect to through a series of nodes. During recovery of one of the instrument arrays, staff noticed that the platform’s legs had deteriorated and collapsed, rendering some of the data useless. For certain data to be useful, the orientation must be known. For future platform deployments, I was tasked with designing a tilt sensor that would stream the current tilt amount over telnet. This device would be fitted inside a pressurized titanium tube that housed other related electronics.

I designed a PCB that measures tilt, heading (compass direction), and temperature. This board was designed with breakout boards to reduce the design and development time, and since only 15 or so will be needed. The heart of the PCB is an Arduino Pro Mini (ATmega328), which hosts a TCP server and broadcasts a timestamped string every second with the current telemetry. The PCB contains a real-time-clock that keeps the time accurate during telnet broadcasts, which is periodically updated from the network’s NTP server. The project is powered on 3.3V, sourced through a regulator, and connects to a network switch in the pressure vessel via ethernet.