1/25/2016
The replacement buoy for Jensen Beach has been prepped and is ready for deployment. At this point we are waiting for a good weather window for deployment and as soon as we get one the buoy will be restored to service.
1/11/2016
The Jensen Beach buoy has stopped reporting and has actually been over due for its scheduled maintenance. We will service this buoy as soon as we possibly can. We are currently working on its replacement and it should be ready in the next week and of course after that we will need a good weather window to perform the service. We apologize for any inconvenience.
10/7/2016
The Jensen Beach Buoy is down due to Hurricane Matthew. We do have a replacement buoy for this location and it will be deployed as soon as possible. Stay tuned for updates.
10/8/2016
The Jensen Beach buoy survived!!! The loss of data during the Hurricane was due to loss of power at the lifeguard shack. Now that power is back on and the laptop that receives the data from the buoy has been re-booted data is flowing again. Still this buoy is overdue for maintenance and the wavegage batteries are very low so data may not flow too much longer. We will swap out buoys as soon as possible.
4/6/2017
It appears we have lost contact with the Jensen Beach buoy. We have upgraded the alternate buoy to cell phone communications as we will soon lose the shore station (lifeguard building) as it is set to go through renovations in the near future. This buoy is ready to go and will replace the current buoy as soon as the opportunity arises with a good weather window.
4/10/2017
We have a boat lined up for the buoy swap but the winds are not forecast to be favorable at all this week but we will continue to monitor the weather and will get out as soon as possible.
4/26/2017
We missed a narrow opportunity today to swap out this buoy. Unfortunately we could not take advantage of the calm conditions and it looks like the weather will not cooperate for at least another week.
4/27/2017
We managed to sneak out today and get the job done just before the winds started to pick up out of the South. We swapped out the buoy and the data is streaming back to the web!
6/27/2017
We went out to Jensen Beach on Tuesday this week to try to sort out the intermittent communications we have had since switching over the data transmitter from point-to-point RF to cell phone. Swapped out transmitters for one with a bit more diagnostic code to aide in troubleshooting and it looks like we have a damaged data cable from the wavegage to the topside buoy. We hope to get out next week after the holiday and swap out buoys to correct the issue.
7/6/2017
We got out to Jensen Beach and swapped out buoys and data is now streaming back to the website. The issue was a damaged data cable.
9/10/2017
Hurricane Irma took out the Jensen Beach buoy around 6pm EST on 9/10. Last reading was 16.3ft at 9s. Pretty burly but we are still striving to build an inexpensive buoy that will survive through hurricanes, even this close to shore.
9/14/2017
Recovered the remains of the Jensen Beach buoy about 5 miles north of its deployed location. We will be able to re-use most if not all of what we recovered. This buoy will be the first to be restored.
9/22/2017
The replacement buoy for Jensen Beach is about 80% complete and expected to be finished by and testing by 9/27. Once testing is complete we will begin to look for a good enough weather window to re-deploy. Thanks for your support!
9/29/2017
The Jensen Beach buoy is ready to roll. We have a boat lined up but now have to wait for a good weather window for deployment.
11/2/2017
We dove on the buoy site to locate the anchor and remains of the buoy and wavegage. After locating the anchor we secured a surface marker to it so it would be easier to deploy the new buoy.
11/9/2017
We got out today by kayak and deployed the new Jensen Beach buoy. She is up and running. Many thanks for your support and patience!
1/13/2018
We abruptly lost communication with this buoy around 11am.
1/17/2018
We have been alerted by a beach goer that this buoy has washed ashore near the House of Refuge. We recovered the remains and found that it has been completely destroyed as washed over the 'Reef of Death' in front of the House of Refuge. We have a buoy ready to go that was earmarked for a different location but will be re-directed to Jensen Beach and deployed once we get a suitable weather window for operations.
2/13/2018
We re-deployed the Jensen Beach buoy today. Great conditions for diving considering the time of year, 71 on the bottom and 10+ ft of viz! Basically put out a whole new station and recovered the remains of the previous station that were still attached to the anchor. The wave gauge was fine as expected but we were pleasantly surprised to recover the buoy transmitter as well and it was in good working order.
5/15/2018
This buoy is the new design and we have discovered a design issue which we believe has resulted in a cable failure at the connection point to the buoy. The fix will require us to remove the buoy to replace the bottom flange which will have a different connector that will relieve the stress on the cable at the buoy. We have one spare buoy that we will be use to swap out with this buoy to reduce any down time that may occur due to this issue. Please bear with us and thanks for your support.
6/6/2018
Got out to Jensen Beach today and swapped out buoy and cable. The cable did fail as expected but the intermittent data issue is still present. This was not expected so there is another issue contributing to this problem and we will address as soon as possible.
6/12/2018
Got out to Jensen Beach today to try another round of troubleshooting. We swapped out the cable for a new one with the thought that the cable we removed was a used cable from a previous deployment. Unfortunately this also did not fully resolve the intermittent data issue. Next attempt will be to swap out the wavegage and this will be done as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!
6/20/2018
We went out to Jensen Beach today and swapped out the buoy and the wavegage in an effort to correct the sporadic data issue. So far the data looks good! Great day for diving, water temp was 79F on the bottom and viz was a good 30 feet. Thanks for your patience and support!
9/5/2018
We have lost communication with the buoy. We will attempt to resolve the issue as son as we can.
10/5/2018
Attempted to fix data stream by swapping out buoys. While there was an issue with this buoy it appears we did not fully solve the issue.
10/10/2018
Second attempt to fix buoy. We replaced the data cable but that did not solve the issue either. Very frustrating!
10/27/2018
Third time is the charm, fingers crossed! We swapped out the whole station and will troubleshoot the old one in the lab. It is working and lets hope it stays that way!
1/29/2019
We are losing communication with the wavegage from this station. The buoy is still functioning properly so it appears to be a failing data cable between wavegage and buoy.
4/11/2019
We got out to the Jensen buoy today and swapped out the whole system. The old data cable had pulled free from the buoy during the large wave event around 1/27/2019. We have added an additional float to the mooring line as well as changed the float spacing to relieve tension on the data cable during large events and/or heavy fouling.
4/14/2019
So the data lasted barely 2 days before something went wrong. It seems that the transmitter has stopped sending messages and this could indicate that the transmitter has reset to factory defaults. This will result in a baud rate mismatch between the cell modem and the microprocessor and they will not be able to communicate and thus no transmissions.
4/22/2019
Swapped out transmitter today and the data is streaming again. Have not yet looked at transmitter for troubleshooting. TX002 was recovered and TX005 was installed in the buoy. TX002 has a history of resetting to factory defaults resulting in lost communications between the cell modem and the microprocessor.
11/26/2019
Swapped out whole buoy station. Hurricane Dorian broke the data cable and exposed a serious unintended consequence of the new mooring line design. That design has been abandoned in favor of a new one that uses a rigid plastic impregnated wire rope that will not stretch and this is intended to keep the data cable from being stretched and thus breaking.
8/17/2020
We got out to Jensen Beach and deployed a new wave station. The data is now streaming but may be sporadic due to rewrites of 2 pieces of code which are in beta trial. We had to switch our old method of delivering data from the buoy to the website because of GoDaddy forcing us to switch from their mail server to Office365 mail server. Our cell modem is not compatible with the Office365 mail server so we had to switch from emailing the data to using TCP sockets to transfer the data. This required a rewrite of the firmware on the transmitter in the buoy as well as the software on our cloud server that handles the incoming data. I know enough to be dangerous using TCP sockets and multithreading in Python so the code will be buggy as I don't know what the failure modes will look like until they crop up. So the long and short of it is that the code on the transmitter and in the cloud are in beta trials and will have to be fixed as bugs appear. And it seems there is already a bug that I will have to deal with and unfortunately I think it is on the transmitter firmware which will require us to recover at least the transmitter to fix. Please be patient as we learn and move forward to achieve a better product.
11/4/2020
The LiIon battery inside the transmitter in the buoy has died. There is an issue with the charging circuit that is preventing the battery from being charged and as a result the battery has finally died. We have another transmitter that is ready to go and will be swapped with the current one once the ocean calms down enough to make the swap. This has been an ongoing intermittent issue whose failure mechanism is not yet known.
11/28/2020
We replaced the transmitter inside the buoy and the data is streaming again. One of the 2 parallel solar panels was ripped off the buoy, no way to be sure how it happened. That may have caused a voltage spike on the charge line at the time of destruction resulting in a blown charge sense resistor in the transmitter, this effectively shuts down battery charging. Or, since the cable from the lost solar panel was submerged it could have caused a short on the charge line also resulting in no battery charging. Regardless of how it went down, the loss of the charge sense resistor mean there is no way for the battery to charge.