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Introduction

For the purposes of ECE 499 offered by the UVic Electrical and Computer Engineering department, our team of three students have designed a project that identifies a real world problem and provides a solution to it. The project was to be designed and implemented over the course of the Summer 2024 semester.

Credit: Greenpeace International. (2019).

The problem we decided to tackle was "ghost traps", which are lost or abandoned crab traps left in the ocean. Ghost traps continue to catch marine life indiscriminately, causing significant environmental harm and economic losses.

A comprehensive report about the project can be viewed in detail by clicking here.

Background

Why is our product needed?

Trap Finder provides a reliable, eco-friendly solution for tracking traps using solar-powered transmitters and a receiver with LoRa technology and GPS Using innovative technology for trap management offers numerous benefits. It reduces ghost fishing, thereby protecting marine ecosystems. Additionally, it provides economic savings by enhancing operational efficiency, saving fishers both time and money. The real-time tracking capability ensures that traps can be easily located and retrieved, further streamlining the fishing process.

Meet the Team!

Ewan Chatham - Computer Engineering (Left) Evan Lee - Electrical Engineering (Middle) Simon Pollak - Computer Engineering (Right)

Design

Our project design consists of 3 main parts.

Communication
Location Tracking
Power Management

Communication

Communication is implemented using an RFM95 LoRa module with a Feather M0 microcontroller. We have a Transmitter (Trap Node) that is housed in the buoy of the crab trap, floating above water, waiting for a request signal from a Receiver (Boat Node). Once the request is received and the Trap Node matches its ID to the list of IDs sent in the request, it will send back the location data until an acknowledgment is again sent by the Boat Node, signaling the location data has been received.
Flowchart diagrams can be seen below to better understand the algorithm.

Flowchart describing the communication process of the Trap Node

Flowchart describing the communication process of the Boat Node

Location Tracking

Location Tracking is done by utilizing a U-Blox SAM-M8Q GNSS antenna module. This module perfect for our project as it is highly accurate thanks to concurrent reception of up to 3 GNSS (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS), easy to use, and tiny form factor. [2] The SAM-M8Q also offered different power settings (such as 2 and 4 Hz cyclic tracking and Power Save Modes). [2]

SAM-M8Q GNSS module

Power Management

Finally, power efficiency was one our top priorities as these Trap Nodes would be out on the water for up to 16 hours at a time, and possibly longer. Lowering the maintenance current draw to a couple tens of mA would result in a smaller battery, cheaper costs and the same amount of time out in the water.
Together with solar panels and a DC solar charger, we were able to create a self-sustaining system that could stay out in the water indefinitely.

1200mAh 3.7V battery
Photo Credit: https://www.adafruit.com/product/258

2.5W 5V 500mAh solar panels

DC Solar Charger
Photo Credit: https://learn.adafruit.com/usb-dc-and-solar-lipoly-charger/

Results

Through testing to find the operating battery life of the Trap Node, we found that the normal idle current draw of the system was about ~32mA. We noticed that transmission of data through LoRa was the most costly, as it spikes to about 170mA for roughly 5ms. As the payload we are transmitting is only 21 bytes of the possible 251 bytes, we are saving current by transmitting only crucial data thus cutting down transmission time and current draw. The chart below is data that we measured from the Trap Node in various scenarios of doing its handshake (request, acknowledgement) routine.

Chart tracking the current draw for the request, payload, acknowledgement handshaking.

Expected lifespan using a 1200mAh battery could be determined. Inclusion of several 5V Solar panels allows the unit to remain active for much longer. Trappers tend to retrieve their traps within hours or days at most, so the following specifications are sufficient when supplemented by solar.

Battery life in days of different handshaking scenarios

Solar Panels combined to give us a peak current output of ~100mA when testing on a semi-cloudy sunny day. Panels in parallel did not combine to output a sum of the panel's currents, which we think are due to some back draw in the solar panels, where the other panel acts as a resistor sucking up the additional current output. This could be fixed by implementing some blocking diodes at the output of the solar panels to keep current flow in one direction.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank everyone who helped us with this project.
First, we are very grateful to our project supervisor, Dr. Hong-Chuan Yang, for his guidance and support. His knowledge and advice were very helpful.
We also want to thank Dr. Sana Shuja, and our teaching assistant, Maryam Ahang, for their support and feedback throughout the semester.
An enormous thank you to Glenn Jones from Reach Technologies, who sponsored and co-supervised our project. His technical and financial support was crucial in completing the project.
We appreciate the chairman for funding our project, which allowed us to get the resources we needed. Finally, we want to thank our family and friends for their constant support and encouragement.

We would also like to acknowledge and respect the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples on whose territory the university stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

References

[1] Greenpeace International. (2019). Ghost gear: The abandoned fishing nets haunting our oceans. [Online]. Available: https://issuu.com/greenpeaceinternational/docs/ghost_fishing_gear_report_en_single_page_051119

[2] "SAM-M8Q Data Sheet," u-blox, Feb. 2019. [Online]. Available: https://content.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/SAM-M8Q_DataSheet_%28UBX-16012619%29.pdf. [Accessed: Jun. 10, 2024].