The Ecological Submarine

The objective for the design is to aid researchers and young scientists to monitor the quality of water using inexpensive instrumentation. Our design is equipped with four sensors to record the levels of nitrate and dissolved oxygen in water as well as the temperature and pH. Some of the sites where the instrument can be deployed are at estuaries which are home to many species of terrestrial and aquatic organisms and rivers. More than two thirds of the fish and shellfish we eat spend some part of their lives in estuaries. Additionally, these ecosystems provide many other important ecological functions because they act as filters for terrestrial pollutants and provide protection from flooding. The balance of this fragile ecosystem needs to be protected because they are easily destroyed by human activities such as sedimentation from construction sites, nitrate from fertilizer use, erosion of natural deposits and many other pollutants. We hope that in future generations our instrument can be used as a stepping stone in order to detect and prevent any alterations in the quality of water that may disrupts life cycles of marine organisms which may result in disastrous effect for the marine food web.

Step 1 Purchasing the required material

The first step to get started on building the ECO-SUB (The name of our device) is to purchase the following materials that are listed in the table in the following step. It comes with the details and parts numbers of each components required for the assemblage of the ECO-SUB and this information can be found in the next step.

Comments

[daniel2008]

hey, nice idea, consider submitting it to the ROV group?

[mman1506]

im 11 too and i thinking of doing somthing simlar by using a camera like a cheap one from vivitar an use leds to give it some light and just put some hobby weights in it and pull it up with rope

[mikemmcmeans]

we used to use these data loggers in high school you should make into a real sub. servos propellers that whole thing

[awkrin]

yeah, cuz this isn't a sub at all, it doesen't even go underwater. u should of rather called it "the floating water probe", cuz a sub has propellers and stuff.

[LinuxH4x0r]

For my ap biology class we are doing a similar thing, except we have to test all of this stuff manualy. Nice Instructable.

[REU 07]

thanks are you using a data loggers and probes to test the water? Where are you planning to test your instruments? We went to a nearby river in Los Angeles and also an Estuary in Playa del Rey. Good luck on your AP bio class, I took it in 10th grade it was really fun! -Pam

[LinuxH4x0r]

We use simple digital thermommeters and a digital pH tester. We use chemicals to titrate the water to test for dissolved oxygen. We also take a sample of water and incubate it to test for fecal coliform (glows under black light). Another thing we do is collect benthics (bugs, snails, etc) and use them as a benchmark of stream health. Me and my friend Rami are currently testing the little tesuqe creek in Hyde memorial park in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'm currently in 10th grade (16 in december) and taking it with a bunch of juniors and seniors. Its a great class. I cant belive I'm saying this, but It was actually a good thing they cancelled my ap Chem class! Thanks for the support- maybe I'll build one of these to use with the logger pros and my ti-84. Keep up the good work. As you can see in the pics we don't have much water in NM -especially for a minnesotan like me!

[REU 07]

wow..do you currently live in NM or are you just staying there? My best friend whom i met at princeton summer school lives in Minnesota, it's an awesome state! =) Although it is pretty chilly in the winter!

Yeah our rivers in Los Angeles are pretty dried up too because of the little rainfall we received last year, not to mention there is a water crisis too.

There is another team who is working on this submarine and they are trying to install a propulsion cable crawler system, it sounds neat, I can't wait till the outcome!

wow..AP chem canceled sounds great! haha I avoided Chem in HS!

Good luck with everything too, it would be cool if you can show me your results when you get them!

[LinuxH4x0r]

I recently moved to NM (august 20, 07), but before that I had been living in Minnesota my whole life (over 15.5 yrs). Minnesota is awesome, and people think I'm weird when I say this, but I love the cold! (thats why I hate nm). This river (creek) is almost always this low (what did you expect, its NM). I think if I have the time and resources (most of my electronics are in MN:( ) , I might just make a little box that I could strap to a tree near the river, have a pipe sticking down into the river with probes, and have it send all the data back to my house wirelessly, (or figure out a way to have it store all the data) My results 11/03/07 3 deg. C 7.52 pH 8.5ppm dissolved Oxygen Pollution: PTI index of 2 (very good) EPT richness 58.33 (fair -skewed because of water temp) Taxa richness of 5 (poor -small sample size skewed results) No fecal coliform If you want more, I could send you the whole report Good luck! Overall health of stream -Good

[DELETED_outdoorsman2014]

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[DELETED_outdoorsman2014]

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[REU 07]

wow you're 11 and starting to build your own submarines! thats great. Well we got our funding through a grant so we basically could buy whatever we wanted! I want to see your instructable one day! -Pam

[jldindc]

How do you get the probes to talk to the datalogger? What software would you use? Does the datalogger automatically detect and record the data from the probes right out of the box? This part is important and which I don't understand. Thanks.

[REU 07]

Once you put the batteries in the datalogger and connect the probes into the datalogger ports, the datalogger will automatically recognize that there are probes. You need to get an interface to see the data when you collect it, such as a palm pilot or a TI-89 calculator. We drilled holes for a cable to come out, a USB cable, which connects to a laptop so you can see the data in real time. The software we used was, Logger Pro 3.5 which came with our probes and datalogger from the company, VERNIER. The datalogger will only recognize the probes if it has batteries. Beware the batteries do run out fast, we realized the 4 AA batteries only lasted one day.

[Myself]

The trick is that USB is only good for about 3 meters, unless you add extenders which would need their own waterproofing. There's a good chance that this USB device would work with a USB device server, so you could use Ethernet, which is good for 100 meters plus. You'd have basic hull-crush concerns before reaching that depth. :)

[joejoerowley]

Very Cool. I hand the same idea once. I wanted to use the left over transparent pvc from my spud gun to make this same thing. Great instructable!

[REU 07]

Wow.. we had to purchase our transparent PVC from Mcmaster-Carr which was a little bit pricy. Although it was worth it because its neat to see our datalogger inside our submarine or we could watch for potential leaks! Good Luck & have fun!! -Pam

[joejoerowley]

Yeah I bought mine from Mcmaster-Carr too. My dad has the same user image on film. He is a nero radiologists.

[tcajahua]

Great! So easy to understand and to follow! Save the environment!

[REU 07]

Thanks the Environment is very important. Plus we talked to Department of Water and Power and they don't even have the same kinds of device, which made us kind of iffy because we don't know what we're drinking in our water! So its great for environmental justice! Good Luck! I hope you enjoy building the submarine! -Pam

[dan]

how deep are these deployed? your configuration looks great for 5m depth, not so good for 25m. otherwise looks like a good simple & reconfigurable design.

[REU 07]

The deepest we deployed our submarine was 5 feet. It didn't sink much because we didn't calculate how much weight we should put in them for it to sink. I think it can go deep, if you sealed it correctly. Good luck!! -Pam