Open source instrumentation nodes for the greater oceanographic community

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has a long history of developing state of the art underwater instruments to support its scientific research. Often these devices are one of a kind, highly engineered pieces of equipment. While MBARI has successfully transferred technology to outside organizations, this generally required extensive training and end users with a specialized skill set. Often times, these instruments require precise machining and come with a high financial price tag. This paper outlines an approach to developing lower cost, easy to use scientific modules that have wide applicability to the greater oceanographic community. With this approach, MBARI is seeking increase access to ocean technology for science. The devices covered in this paper grew out of the development of the exportable Free Ocean CO₂ Enrichment (xFOCE) system. The core of this system is a series of modular building blocks which add design flexibility and ease of fabrication and maintenance. Two of the base building blocks are the Gateway Node and Sensor Node. The Gateway Node acts as a central computer which is able to control any underwater experiment. The Sensor Node acts as multi-port interface to a wide range of scientific instruments. Both nodes were designed to be open source, and thus modifiable by the end user.