Overview

This guide will show you how to connect the Dev Kit to a Spotter and Smart Mooring. We’ll explore some of Bristlemouth’s networking features and finish the guide by learning how to connect to Spotter over USB.

Contents:

<aside> ⏳ Expect to take about 30 minutes.

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Making a Bristlemouth connection to the Spotter

To start using the Bristlemouth features, you can connect the Dev Board to another Bristlemouth-powered device. For this guide, we will use the Sofar Spotter, a metocean buoy that collects and transmits wave, wind, sea surface temperature, and barometric pressure data in real-time. The Sofar Spotter connects to underwater sensors through Smart Mooring to deliver real-time water level, tides, and water temperature and other payloads using the Bristlemouth protocol.

<aside> 📖 Now is a good time to take a minute and familiarize yourself with the Spotter documentation:

Spotter Product Documentation & Onboarding

</aside>

Preparing the Spotter buoy

  1. Take your Spotter out of the box and place it on a table where you have room to work.

  2. Remove the lid on your Spotter using the hex wrench provided in the Spotter accessories box.

  3. [Recommended] We want to make sure the Spotter has full batteries before we keep going. Connect your Spotter to a power outlet using the wall charger provided in the Spotter accessories box. It should light up. Don’t worry about any of the LEDs on the Spotter for now.

  4. Make sure there is an SD card in your Spotter.

Connecting the Dev Board to the Spotter

  1. Your Spotter + Smart Mooring is comprised of a Spotter buoy connected to a number of nodes. The nodes are all connected by the yellow Smart Mooring data cable. Each node is inside a protective metal housing that also joins or terminates the data cable, as shown in the diagram below.

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  2. Find the node you want to connect the Dev Kit to. Open the node using a hex wrench.

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  3. Depending on which node in the Smart Mooring you’re opening, there could be jumpers running across the node (Figure A) to the other cable or, if it’s at the end of the Smart Mooring, just dummy plugs (Figure B).

    FIGURE A. Node in the middle of the Smart Mooring, with cables on both ends and jumpers joining them.

    FIGURE A. Node in the middle of the Smart Mooring, with cables on both ends and jumpers joining them.

    FIGURE B. Node at the end of the Smart Mooring, with dummy plugs on one end.

    FIGURE B. Node at the end of the Smart Mooring, with dummy plugs on one end.

  4. Disconnect the wall charger from the Bristlemouth Dev Board. We’re going to be using the power from Spotter to power the Dev Board going forward.

  5. Find the longer (400mm) pair of jumpers from the Bristlemouth Dev Kit box and use them to connect the Dev Board to the Smart Mooring cable on your node (you will replace the existing jumpers or dummy plugs)

    <aside> ⚠️ Always keep the same polarity: black-to-black and white-to-white. It doesn’t matter which of the two connection ports (pair) you use, but both the black and white jumper must be on the same port.

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    Dev Kit connected to a middle node.

    Dev Kit connected to a middle node.

    Dev Kit connected to an end (bottom) node.

    Dev Kit connected to an end (bottom) node.