Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 4.0.0

This release focuses on enhancing Iridium telemetry and overall system reliability. The message buffer has been expanded to store up to 100 failed transmissions (previously 10), greatly reducing the risk of data loss during poor connectivity. GNSS acquisition has been refined to improve the quality of collected positions, and new per-unit calibration routines have been added for the IMU, providing more accurate orientation estimates.

GNSS

• Improved GNSS acquisition with minimum consecutive fix thresholds and a quality window, with early exit on sufficient HDOP.
• Added position fallback handling, field freshness checks, and explicit no-fix sentinels for reliability.
• Refined RTC syncing and enhanced debug output.

Iridium

• Added a RAM-based ring buffer to queue up to 100 MO-SBD messages. Messages are retried in newest-first order (LIFO) until successfully sent.
• Added detailed queue status, message previews, and a hex dump of the MO-SBD buffer, improving diagnostics for connectivity, backlog size, and data integrity.

IMU

• Implemented LSM6DSOX/LIS3MDL per-unit magnetometer calibration with hard-iron bias and diagonal soft-iron scaling for tilt-compensated heading.
• Added sample discards and averaging on wake to reduce startup transients and noise in orientation estimates.

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo 9 months ago

Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 3.3.4

This release:

• Additional license information included for all employed libraries.
• Repository prepared for use with Zenodo in order to register DOI.

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo over 2 years ago

Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 3.3.3

This release:

• Minor fix to increase sample interval maximum range from 60 to 10080 minutes.

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo over 2 years ago

Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 3.3.2

This release:

• Minor fix to standardize size of sampleInterval in SBD MT struct/union to uint16_t, allowing for sampling interval durations greater than 255 minutes.

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo almost 3 years ago

Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 3.3.1

This release:

• Added compatibility changes for RockBLOCK hardware revision v3.F.

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo about 3 years ago

Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 3.3.0

This release:

• Minor revision to PCB design (v3.1) resulted in a smaller size.
• PCB dimensions and hole patterns standardized to metric.
• New parametric 3D-printed case.
• Recreated schematic using new library components.
• Continued standardization of code with Cryologger AWS repository.
• Additional code commenting and cleaning.
• Code prepared for 2023 Amundsen Expedition deployments.

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo about 3 years ago

Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 3.2.0

This release:

• Replaced deprecated LSM6DS3 + LIS3MDL IMU with LSM303AGR accelerometer + magnetometer.
• Implemented new min/max calibration for LIS2MDL magnetometer tilt compensation.
• Began standardization of code with Cryologger AWS repository.
• Prepared code for deployment in Grise Fiord, Nunavut.
• Additional code commenting and cleaning.
• Adapted 3D-printed case from v1.0 for v3.x circuit board.

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo over 3 years ago

Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 3.1.0

This release includes a number of improvements and bug fixes for version 3.0 of Cryologger iceberg tracking beacon (ITB), which was initially deployed in the Canadian Arctic during the 2021 Amundsen Expedition.

• Improved assessment of GNSS message validity for ensure RTC date and time synchronization is reliable.
• Simplified RTC alarm logic to default to daily transmissions in the event of multiple transmission failures.
• Resistor divider increased to 10MΩ + 1 MΩ to allow for a wider range of battery voltages (6.0 V - 36.0 V).
• RTC alarms limited to daily to prevent the accidental setting of alarms far in the future.
• Dedicated ADC tab including code to manually adjust offset and gain values.
• Code prepared for 2022 Milne Fiord epishelf lake deployments.

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo about 4 years ago

Iceberg Tracking Beacon - Version 3.0.0 - Initial Release

This is the initial release of Version 3.0 of Cryologger iceberg tracking beacon (ITB), deployed in the Canadian Arctic during the 2021 Amundsen Expedition. This version builds on the success of v2.0 and while still based on the Adafruit ecosystem of components, includes several improvements to the overall design, including:

• A custom PCB carrier board was designed to greatly simplify the assembly process.
• The DS3231 real-time clock (RTC) was removed in favour of the SAMD21's internal RTC for all timekeeping and alarm functionality with periodic time synchronization with the GPS.
• 3.3 V power is now provided directly from a Pololu 3.3 V step-down voltage regulator, bypassing the Feather M0's onboard AP2112 LDO regulator (-55 μA).
• A dedicated 5 V step-down voltage regulator was added to power the RockBLOCK Iridium transceiver.
• Due to the sensor reaching its end-of-life (EOL), The LSM303 accelerometer/magnetometer was replaced with the LSM6DS33 + LIS3MDL IMU.
• Sensors are now powered directly through SAMD21 GPIO pins, allowing for power to be completely removed during sleep.
• A 2MΩ + 1 MΩ resistor divider is now used to measure the battery voltage (+2.4 μA).

Cryosphere - Glacier and Ice Sheets - C++
Published by adamgarbo about 4 years ago