"Mercator Origins": Sat Nav & Telemetry for Divers

Ok this weekend I'm going to drop a mega set of videos... subscribe to my youtube channel and you'll be the first to taste the awesomeness that's gonna be hitting the dive industry very soon!

www.youtube.com/@zxfan

Please do subscribe and tell all your scuba, tech and engineer friends to check out my channel this weekend!

It's gonna be a beautiful day :-)

The more work that gets done the messier it gets.

I have resigned myself to a periodic complete clean sweep every few days.

I am comfortable with organised chaos!

Even for me today is a bit too high on the scale of utter mess!

Here's a quick all round look at how the Mercator Origins telemetry console is shaping up. V2 will address the hot glue goo around the magnetic reed switches that's looking a bit messy.

So what can we see?

* 2 x M5 Stick C Plus ESP-32 Microcontrollers each with screen

* Magnetometer and Accelerometer Sensor PCB to implement tilt-compensated digital compass

* Lux/Colour/Gesture Sensor PCB

* On the rear of the case: depth sensor rated to 300m and 2mm resolution.

* Phototransistor/Resistor at the end of one of the sticks that's picking up the signal from the hidden Infra-Red diode to obtain one extra output. It's needed because I've run out of physical output pins on the sticks and it's used to activate the serial transmit line back up to the float. Without this the comms wouldn't be biddirectional!

* On the back you might just see a dual-line copper wire that encircles the back of the inside of the case. This is the leak detector.

* On the back the blue PCB is the RS485 up/down link booster for communication with the float.

* Two button mounts that enable the physical gopro case button pins to activate hidden tiny microswitches to feed user button input into the sticks.

and hidden from view....

* Temperature, Humidity and Air Pressure sensor to measure internal environment.

My very first video uploaded to the interwebs... see my new youtube channel at www.youtube.com/@zxfan !

check it out! thanks to Mark Bruce, dive instructor at Wraysbury Lake for the video.      www.wraysbury.ws

https://www.facebook.com/reel/3217522155206030/?s=single_unit

Here's what my maker's lab, otherwise know as my front bedroom looks like this morning.

See if you can spot all the cool items I've collected in the last few months and add your comments below!

(Thanks Gary Sargent - this time I uploaded without any sensitive info shown! Don't worry that's been rectified already)

It's funny that a lot of my inspiration has come to me since visiting Hearne Bay in Kent a few weeks ago to collect fossils with Esin. We found a wicked collectibles shop where I picked up this cool die cast De Lorean, the one from the end of the original Back to the Future film.

We didn't pick up Voltran as the fella was £80 but I'm very tempted to go back for him!

I credit Mr Fusion for helping me channel my Doc Brown these last few months ;-)

Check out RAM collectibles now, the owner is a genius and an asset to Hearne Bay:

https://www.facebook.com/people/RAM-Collectible-Toys/100056738954720/

https://ramcollectibletoys.co.uk

Forget gansta's paradise, this is geek's paradise courtesy of Amazon a moment ago:

I tried these out on kindle first to make sure there were looking good. I had a massive smile on my face when I saw their heft in the dead wood version!

Why, of course... I love this song - I will never forget it, nor Coolio - it represents the year I left home to goto University. Great Times!

Handbook of Nodemcu, ESP32 - Arsath Natheem S (2023 new edition)

500 Electronics Projects (for inventors with tested circuits) - Arsath Natheem S (2023 new edition)

Today is Earth Day. Let's make our seas more accessible and push for zero sewage discharge, sustainable fishing and a global ban on the harvesting of shark fins.

https://www.earthday.org

Shout out to Anya at my favourite dive operation on the South coast of England. Anya's team focusses on conservation and educational experiences for young people. Anya also leads chilled out Shore Dives up to 6m, Free Diving and Snorkelling experiences in the Selsey, West Sussex area (near Chichester). If you're interested do contact Anna's team as they have recently shifted focus to conservation and they deserve your custom!

Can't wait to try out Mercator Origins with you guys!

Mulberry Marine Experiences:  https://www.facebook.com/MulberryME

And the beautiful coast of Selsey Bill, West Sussex, UK:

This is a photo from the Wikimedia Commons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selsey

#greenpeace
#seasearch
#surfersagainstsewage

This is a shout out to support my friends at Aquanaut in Kingston Upon Thames, just a 10 minute bicycle ride from my home.

I turned to the lovely people at Aquanaut in May 2019 to upskill my diving so that I could enjoy my favourite sport at all times of the year and not just when on holiday. Their training and equipment advice has enabled me to get to where I am today.

https://aquanautscuba.co.uk

I'd just completed the Advanced Scuba Diver training in the Azores on holiday and I was hungry for more. So it was about find the kit, find the people to train me, identify the courses to do and get cracking.

I kicked off with the dry suit course and it spiralled from there until I realised in August 2020 that I'd already done way more speciality courses than required to apply for PADI Master Scuba Diver, so I applied for that and I was then done with courses - I wanted to just get diving hours under my belt to get better as we never stop learning. In particular it was about managing my air consumption more, or in other words learning to just chill the heck out so I didn't chew through air which makes the dive shorter.

An average air consumption according to PADI is about 15 Litres of air per minute at surface pressure. To work out what that means in terms of absolute volume of air used per minute at depth you use this forumla:

Absolute Air Consumption Per Minute = 

     Surface Air Consumption x ( Depth in metres / 10 + 1)

So at 10 metres depth with a surface consumption of 15 litres per minute that would make 30 litres per minute. I was between 15 and 18 litres per minute which wasn't bad, but it's always more at the beginning of the dive when you start and also if you get into a bit of a pickle and things don't go exactly as planned.

Well I'm now down to my PB of 8 Litres per minute at my most Zen at Wraysbury on a hot summer's day when the lake temperature was at 23 C last August so things have improved somewhat!

Thank you Ian, Lynne, James B, James W, Matt, Greg, Alex and co. for the fantastic experiences your team has given me which has improved my diving no end and which has also opened up this new world of democratising the tech enabling our industry.

The last few weeks have been rather intense, but so enjoyable, working on this project and completing the first underwater test which was a great success.

Yesterday evening was finally a time to chill-out and absorb the sense of achievement gained so far. Things have been moving so fast that there hasn't really been a great deal of time just to relax and take my foot off the gas. That I've just done my Solo Diver SDI course as well adds to the feeling of possiblity.

So now is a time to spend time with friends, ponder about sorting out the youtube video and getting up to speed on a video editor and let my mind wander through possible next directions for Mercator. It's a case of more paths and options than are needed for next stage so a low-pass filter needs to be applied! 

So prioritisation, balance of needs and careful consideration of what I want out of this project and also how I could include some of my closest friends in a colloborative effort for v2 or v3 is how the agenda looks.