This week I spent my time on a old vineyard near Springbrook, the job at hand was to repair as many sensor nodes as we could. The land has been purchased by the Queensland government to be restored, there are a few patches of rain forest and thick bush land that we have to walk through to get to each node. Besides the suiting up to keep the cold/leaches/ticks away walking around this land is just spectacular and has become my favorite work environment. I have posted some images below to give a idea of the beauty of the land.
Besides trying to keep our electronics dry (laptop, sensor boards when cover removed) the rain didn’t bother me at all, it was more refreshing and relaxing, the wind did get annoying though it seems to get through any amount of cloathing one would put on.
Map of the network is below the images. 🙂

Map with sensor nodes dotted around

Battery Pack

Back of LCD, with a Arduino Atmega328 custom daughterboard

Back of battery pack, polo switch with reed switch. Magnet turns on the power micro turns it off again.

Another pic of the micro in place, with the servo in the foreground. Lovely mount job :p

Back of the LCD, and the top of the latch that mates with the servo locking the box.

Top of the box with the LCD, front this time.

Secrut mini USB port hidden on the side of the box, this allows modification of the code and extra power if batteries fail

ohh and the GPS yet to find a place in the box, I’m thinking at the top near the LCD

And that’s a breif walkthrough of my little project.

Being my fist LCA this was my fist open day, I was wanting to go the the last one but spent most of my time rebuilding a server for TUCS. It was like a Salamanca market for geeks, and most of the wares were free (since this was a open source community). I found a few neat thinks like the racing car that ran only on batteries. And picked up my geek prayer book. After the open day I walked down to the museum, besides being a museum there were a few hands on activities that made things fun as you walked through. The day ended with a bunch of us in the common room eating pizza and working on our individual projects, a good end to the week in NZ.