PLA-Buoy

The Porpoise Locating Array Buoy (PLA-Buoy) is an autonomous marine sensor platform which uses multiple hydrophones to triangulate the position of vocalising harbour porpoises underwater. The buoy consists of a cRio controller which continuously records between 4-12 channels of acoustic data, sampled at 500kS/s. The data is saved to an external hard drive, either as .wav files or compressed X3 files. Serial data, e.g. a GPS can also be saved.

The programs available here are:
1) C++ code which runs on the cRio to record data. This is built around a modular framework allowing different functions to be implemented/disabled.
2) A tablet interface to show real time incoming data and control the buoy whilst it's deployed at sea.
3) A program to model array positions based on sensor information (e.g. depth and IMU readings). This allows users to integrate into PAMGUARD, which contains all functionality required to localise data collected from PLA Buoy.