Easily one of the coolest parts about projects where you open your data to the internet, like the PacX challenge, is seeing what the community comes up with. So we’re proud to promote one of the first PacX apps (that I’ve seen) built outside of Liquid Robotics.
The app was created by Polar Jack Software, an independent developer in France. He is easily our biggest fan as sometimes it seems he monitors our Wave Gliders more closely than us. The app is for the HP Touchpad, so only about a million people in the whole world can even download it, but never the less, there’s an app for that!
You can download the app from the HP App Catalog and Polar Jack Software also has a product page for the App. Below are some screen shots from the app.
Thanks to Polar Jack for being such a huge fan! I hope people out there enjoy his app and make some discoveries with it! You can reach out to Polar Jack on twitter using @PolarJackSW.
I’m sure there is something interesting in the data we have not yet found. If you find anything, make an app, or do anything with the PacX data you would like us to see or mention, you can reach us through our tumblr blog or on twitter @liquidrinc.
polarjacksw asked: Where the Gliders are going ? Since 2 or 3 days, the Cap has changed for Fontaine Maru, Piccard Maru and Benjamin. There are not going to the buoy south of Hawaii through the Alenuihaha Channel between the two main islands, but it seems that there are going right to the main island.
We always planned on sending the Wave Gliders through the Alenuihaha Channel after going to NDBC Buoy 51000 and to our test range in the North Kohala Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, so they are on the correct path.
We regularly take pictures from the PacX Wave Gliders as you may have noticed, but something very interesting happened this time - We found a stowaway! We have no idea what this little critter is, we’re hoping you all in the internet world can help us identify it for us. Here are the pics:
In our previous posts we mentioned the major storm our Wave Gliders went through, and we just recently found out that we weren’t alone out there! We learned that there was a Canadian family that was rescued by a container ship in the same vicinity (~600 Miles away) as our Wave Gliders.
We’re not sure if our Wave Glider data could have helped them in this instance. Maybe we could have helped steer them in the right direction, or have told them to maintain a holding pattern until the storm passed. But what is important to note is the lack of data available when you’re in the open ocean, you’re on your own as far as knowing what conditions to expect. Currently the only sources of data are buoy’s which are few and far between, and satellite instruments (which can be seen via the S.T.A.R. website). Unfortunately there is no single place where all of this data is aggregated and easily available to the public.
Up to now the Wave Gliders have not seen any horrible weather, conditions have been ideal. Starting in early February, the vehicles encountered their first significant storm. In the images below you can see wind gusts between 40 and 100 knots starting on February 5th. This is coincidental with the barometric pressure dropping below 1000 mb for Papa Mau and approaching 980 for Piccard Maru. A pressure that low is comparable to pressures at the center of a hurricane! The wave heights associated with this storm were near 8 meters!
polarjacksw asked: When computing the solar position corresponding to "Benjamin venturing west Sunday morning, January 29, 2012 at 16:18z", it seems that the sun is under the horizon (Zenith Distance: 93.18°, Azimuth: 114.56°). Is it really the correct time of the picture ?
What latitude and longitude did you use in your calculation? You stated the azimuth but what was the resulting altitude of the sun?
michaelkoopmans asked: When a wave spectra is calculated, isn't a response amplitude operator utilized? Where does the Datawell sensor get this information? Or has Liquid Robotics estimated this statistic using a combination of wave tank testing and computer simulations?
The filter response of the instrument is determined ahead of time. In addition, there is of course the hydrodynamic response of the glider with its length and width in relation to the wave length. This was examined when the glider travelled a square trajectory, The resulting spectra showed only little differences due to slowly changing wave conditions, rather than hydrodynamic response issues.
LB
tritonimaginginc asked: Hi - just started looking at this so forgive me if this has been asked before. There is now a considerable spread in positions between the 4 vehicles of 200+ miles. Any thoughts on why?
If we consider the 4 wave gliders as physically identical, the only explanation for the current spread in position is local oceanographic and meteorological conditions.
LB
