SMaRT

SMaRT

Sensor Management and Relay Tool

This tool is designed to facilitate easier sensor integration on gliders, and it replaces this board. The idea is to have a mainboard that hosts popular, easy-to-source modules in order to create a man-in-the-middle board for custom sensor integration on Seaglider or to fully use the capabilities of the Slocum BackSeatDriver without the need for power-hungry boards such as the Raspberry Pi or other single-board computers.

Hardware

• the brain is an RP2040 board (Pi Pico)
• the RS232 transceivers are SparkFun MAX3232 modules
• the DC-DC converter is the popular MP1584 module
• (optional) OpenLog for using this board as a data logger
• (optional) solid-state relay for independent sensor power control
• Connectors:
  • Molex connectors compatible with the ones used in the Slocum Science Computer
  • 2.54 mm pitch footprints for most other connectors, so either simple headers or other locking connectors such as the JST-XH series can be used
  • 2 x Qwiic connectors for connecting external sensor modules

The form factor is also just small enough to fit inside a 1000 m rated 2" x 150 mm Blue Robotics housing, so it could be used as an external interface, which was the original idea. It could also be used as a simple logger with a single end connection to a sensor.

Firmware

The firmware is based on Zephyr, a modern open-source real-time operating system hosted by the Linux Foundation and originally initiated by Intel. It follows industry best practices for safety, security, and modularity, and benefits from a broad, vendor-neutral ecosystem. Unlike many traditional RTOS solutions that are tightly coupled to a single vendor, Zephyr is highly portable and hardware-agnostic, making it well suited for flexible and scalable embedded system design. The firmware (see firmware/README.md) supports both Slocum (Backseat Driver) and Seaglider (logdev). Each glider + sensor integration is a profile under firmware/profiles/: a configuration file plus the matching glider-side file (extctl.ini or .cnf), so most new sensors need no code. Profiles are included for the UVP6 on both gliders. The original Slocum UVP6 firmware is kept in legacy/uvp6_slocum_v1.