Compact Buoy System for Scallop Cultivation Using Sensor Network Technologies

In this paper, the authors present a compact buoy system used to observe seawater temperatures for scallop cultivation. The system is based on the sensor network technology, namely Micro Cube, which makes it possible to collect seawater temperatures from thermometers via the Internet. Thermometers adopted with a multi-drop interface for measuring the multi-layer seawater temperatures were also developed in this study. A low power micro controller is used as the A/D converter for thermistor in the thermometer. The thermometer has an accuracy of plusmn0.5 degree of Celsius. The buoy system developed for the scallop cultivation is extremely smaller and lighter than the general buoy system and designed for easy handling on the sea. That makes the present system easily applicable to fishery. The measured data are sent by an email from Micro Cube to the web database server via a dial up connection (PPP). The web database system for storing and showing measurements through the Internet has been configured by a free database engine on the Linux operating system. In this paper, the development of the system is described and the experiments carried out on the west coast of Hokkaido, Japan are discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the present system