Picture of the Week (SeaTag-MOD deployed on a whale shark, picture courtesy of Georgia Aquarium)
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Desert Star Systems New Release
What's new at Desert Star?
By: Thomas Gray (tgray@desertstar.com)
Despite selling acoustic
positioning systems for over a decade, we have seen an increasing interest
in our SeaTag
animal tags. We have been developing the SeaTag product line for about four
years now focusing mainly on innovation and the use of new technologies such as
stored solar power and magnetics for positioning. Now these core technologies
can be found amongst the entire line of SeaTags such as the inexpensive
geolocation only tag (SeaTag-GEO) and the highly modular pop-up satellite tag
capable of measuring nearly anything (SeaTag-MOD). The SeaTag-MODs standard set
of sensors allow it to measure longitude via the solar cell, latitude through
magnetics, 3d acceleration, precision depth, and temperature, but its modular
plug-in section opens up the possibility to measure anything (oxygen, salinity,
oil dispersants, etc).
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The use of magnetics in tags is not completely new; however, we are the first
company to discover how to use magnetics to determine latitude positioning
independent of light. The tags are equipped with a magnetometer that measures
magnetic fields which then results in a latitude position accurate within about
35nm on average. However, with some filtering and ground-truthing we think that
their is a possibility of reducing this error by more than half. When compared
to light-only based geolocation this is quite significant!
Solar power...underwater...really?
Yes...really! The tags are all wrapped in a solar cell which is connected to a
'super' capacitor. The capacitor then powers the tag's electronics. A typical
question we often hear is, "How well (or not) does it work
underwater?" The tag itself can harvest energy from the sun at twice the
vertical visibility of the water; therefore, if the visibility is 10m the tag
can still harvest energy at 20m. BUT what does this mean in relationship to
when the tag is below the threshold? The function of the capacitor is to store
the energy from the sun while the tag is exposed in this harvesting area. On a
full charge (approximately 15-30mins of direct sunlight) the tag's capacitor is
capable of powering the tag for up two weeks of total darkness.
For fish that do not come to the surface during the day, long enough, or at all
we supplement the solar power system with an internal battery back-up (on the
archival tags) or a battery release section for the pop-up satellite tags
(optional battery sizes). So what this means is that if you have a fish that
comes to the surface every day for some period of time then, in theory, the tag
could stay on this fish for its lifetime collecting data.
Are there any new tag developments?
Over the course of the last few years as pop-up satellite tags started becoming
smaller, we've seen interest switch to the smaller tags. Historically these
smaller tags have been just mirrors of their larger tags; however, we thought
that we would go a different route.
We are currently developing the smallest pop-up satellite tag, SeaTag-GEO/PSAT.
The tag will be based on a mixture of our small geolocation-only tag and our
pop-up satellite tag. The tag is equipped with a 3-axis magnetometer for
latitude positioning, the solar cell and capacitor for both power and
longitude, a temperature sensor, an ARGOS transmitter, a skinny low-drag float,
and a pop-off release section. The tag weighs on 29g and measures 132mm L x
13mm D (main section).
In large quantities this model (part number: ST-GEOr) costs only $945 each.
Are you interested in how our tags compare to the other available tags? I
have already done most of the leg work, click
here to see a comparison of all the pop-up satellite tags based on published public data. If you have
information that is not in the table or if I have information that is incorrect
please email me at tgray@desertstar.com so that I can update the table.
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SeaTag-GEO/PSAT with AA battery for size reference
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Desert Star Systems
3261 Imjin Road · Marina, CA 93933
831-384-8000 · salesinfo@desertstar.com
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8/10/2010 - Purchasing Without Competitive Bidding (ie: FedBizOps)
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