For the last several years I've been working with the Friends of the Mariana Trench to campaign on expanding the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument and creating a National Marine Sanctuary around the deepest feature in our ocean. As part of that effort, I've been working with a high school senior in Saipan to develop their senior project. Which means that the very first OpenCTD kit will be heading out to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands next week, where it will be used to sample (the first 100 meters of) the Marianas Trench. 

Shipping equipment to Saipan isn't easy, so I've spent the last few weeks making sure we have absolutely everything they'll need to build their own CTD. Any missing part means week of delay. 

This morning, I went through everything we need to build the brain, including tools and consumables. This includes the custom PCB, headers, an Adalogger M0, real-time clock, conductivity module, a few resistors, a board mounted switch, SD card, and coin cell battery. A larger battery will be mounted to the board later, but I like to save that for the very last step before calibrating to minimize the amount of time a lipoly battery spends near a hot soldering iron.

Since we used a custom PCB, the brain is probably the easiest part of the entire build. There's a spot for each component and only one way to put it all together. But it took us a long time to