Support Engineering Group : McStar (Ear in the Sea) This page last changed on Mar 05, 2010 by tm. Gene Massion and Wayne Radochonski tTransitioned to Thom Maughan and Jose Rosal of Support Engineering in Jan 2010 #### McStar (EITS) Enhancements ##### Hardware Improve A/D converter Reduce power consumption. TM: personal goal is to reduce to 25% of existing levels (may not be possible, but why not aim high/low) Get rid of self-generated noise artifacts. TM: speculating noise bands could be due to switching power supplies on beagleboard and for 12 to 5v conversion. Remove/reduce harddisk acoustics Add automatic gain control capability. Replace spinnning harddisk with solid state SATA drive (reduce power consumption ##### Software Check software into CVS (or SVN) Fix 'blanking' that occurs every 27 seconds. TM: speculating this could be due to large buffer writes to disk Add automatic gain control capability (peak or rms based algorithm) ##### Documentation Create user's guide Update test procedure ##### Testing Improve pre-deployment testing - work towards have a DMO executable procedure. Characterize noise and transfer function for the audio signal chain (A/D, Analog Front End, Hydrophone). Anechoic chamber - water filled acoustically quiet test chamber Test tank - analyze test tank noise and identify acoustic signals Deploy a hydrophone on MARS to get a baseline signature ##### Notes Cornell BioAcoustics http://www.allaboutbirds.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=430 #### Deployments ##### 17 Mar 2010 to Southern California to listen to Gas Bubbles (Ear-In-The-Sea) 3 Mar: Hard drive is in, McStar is passing functional tests [DONE] 4 Mar. Paul and Thom to button up the top housing. [DONE] Paul to run Helium leak test on all housings. [DONE] 5 Mar Thom to give Bill 'McStar users guide' to insure he knows how to operate McStar. Thom to run McStar tests in a 'quite place' (foam lined cardboard box in Canyon Dynamics lab) Thom/Bill to upload 'quiet' data for Bill to analyze for noise components. Thom to finish preparing backup harddrive and processor board. 8 Mar to 15 Mar: Top Housing is opened, Analog front end power disconnected, magnet in place to switch off other batteries - In Storage in Canyon Dynamics lab Mike Conway with help from Paul to assemble housings into new McStar frame (for Ricketts toolsled) by Mar. 15 16 Mar. Paul and Thom to reconnect analog front-end power and button up the top housing. Paul to re-run Helium leak test on top housing. Thom, Paul, Mike to take McStar 'in pieces' over to the flyer and assemble in the moon pool area Thom to sanity check McStar functionality and run through operating procedure with Bill Ussler. 17 Mar Thom, Bill to double-check McStar readiness on Western Flyer

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