This page last changed on Jul 01, 2008 by ckecy.

System Level 

The electronic systems of FOCE consist of a main electrical housing, three junction boxes, a variety of scientific and engineering instruments, and all necessary interfacing cabling. FOCE is tethered to MARS via a 30 meter umbilical cable which provides ethernet connections and +375Vdc. The main electrical housing contains all of the computer systems and peripheral hardware needed to interface with the scientific instruments. Included in the main housing is the power distribution, computer stack, and a variety of communication interfaces (USB, serial, video server). The junction boxes serve as a distribution  interface between the instruments and the main housing.

External Cabling of FOCE

Electrical Block Diagram Concept

Junction Box A RevC

Junction Box B RevB

Motor Housing

Power Board

Mars Interface

The FOCE experiment will reside on the ocean floor within 30 meters of the MARS science node. The electronics housing will be connected to MARS with a cable from Falmat connectorized on one end with a 12-way ODI and a MINK-16-CCP on the other.

MARS Interface Cable 


 

Electronics Housing

The electronics for the FOCE experiment will reside in the housing originally deployed with DORISS. It is a cylindrical vessel with an internal diameter of xx and length of yy, resulting in a usable volume of zz. The housing has a collar with 8 water resistant connectors which attach to the junction boxes. The other end will be a domed cap with no electrical fittings. A side port, previously used for a camera with DORISS, will be capped off.

The junction box is the same type as used on the Tiburon replacement vehicle. It is a plastic cylindrical shell with a removal internal basedboard. The junction box will have 9 Dorn syle fittings and 4 FCR style bulkhead connections. The terminal strips will be mounted on the baseboard.

Electronics Housing Wiring Diagram RevB

Netgear Ethernet Switch

AnywhereUSB Server

DigiPort TS MEI Quad Serial Server

Axis 241 Video Server

HTM2500 Temp & Humidity Sensor

Cabling

Electronics Housing to Junction Box Cable

Computer Stack

The computer for FOCE is a PC/104 stack consisting of seven individual boards. It consists of a main CPU board, a 1:4 ethernet switch, an octal serial expander, a 16-channel relay board, a data acquisition boad, a system health monitor, and a power supply. The computer stack is responsible for the main FOCE control loop, data acquisition, and remote control of the onboard digital camera.

The CPU board is a Lippert Cool RoadRunner-LX800 PC/104-Plus single board computer. It is a CPU board with LCD+VGA, CRT, AMD GEODE LX800@0.9W (500 MHz), up to 1GB DDR SDRAM, 4x USB2.0, IrDA, RTC, GoldCap, EIDE, 3x COM, LPT, PS/2 keyboard and mouse, watchdog, PC/104 bus, PC/104+ bus, VGA controller, TFT, bitparallel and LVDS interface, Fast Ethernet 100/10BaseT, 8Bit GPIO, Compact Flash Type II Socket, and AC97 sound.

The hard drive is a Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB Notebook drive.

The serial expander is a ConnectTech Inc Xtreme/104-Plus Octal Serial Expander.

The relay board is a Real Time Devices DM6952HR Power Relay Output Module.

The data acquisition board is a Diamond-MM-32x-AT Analog/Digital Input/Output Module.

The PCI104 Bus system health monitor is a Tri-M Engineering HM-PCI104 Health Monitor.

The PC/104 Bus system health monitor is a Tri-M Engineering HMPC104 Health Monitor.

The power supply is a Tri-M Systems HE104+DX 108 Watt Power Supply.

The auxilliary board contains additional circuitry for data acquisition scaling and miscellaneous functions.



System Power

Input power to FOCE is +375Vdc supplied by the MARS node. It is downconverted to +24Vdc and +12Vdc by a pair of DC-DC Converters from Vicor. The 375-24V converter is rated at 600W and the 375-12V converter is rated at 150W.

375Vdc to 24Vdc Maxi DC-DC Converter

375Vdc to 12Vdc Micro DC-DC Converter




Scientific Instruments


SeaBird 18 pH Sensor

SeaBird 52 CTD Sensor

RDI ADCP

Nortek Velocimeter

Sami pC02 Sensor

Engineering Instruments


Insite Scorpio Camera

OceanTools LED

EZ Servo

Maxon Motor


FOCE_MARS_May2008.pdf (application/pdf)
Document generated by Confluence on Feb 03, 2026 14:29