Zap!

Antarctica is know as "The Harsh Continent."  I have mentioned this before in other blog posts.  It is dry here, very dry, like a desert.  As you may know I am here on the continent working on the latest generation of an Automated Weather Station, or AWS.  Leading up to the trip my students, Forbes Filip and Joey Miller, were working tirelessly with me to get a prototype ready for the trip.  We finished the schematic, worked exhaustively through the layout of the printed circuit board and even had a multitude of "soldering parties" in the "lab" in my basement at home.

There was still work to be done on both the circuit and programming but it was time to depart.  So I brought as much of my lab here as i thought i would need.

I packed a soldering iron, all the soldering tips i could need, flux, portable ground straps, programming devices, and my laptop with software to program the board.

Once we arrived and got through training I got access to the office and lab here.  As Matthew and I moved around the office and the station I began to notice the hazard to all prototypes, STATIC ELECTRICITY!  The build-up of charge on the human body can be anywhere from 1kV to 25 kV given the proper conditions.  Antarctica is ripe with the proper conditions!  Low humidity is the largest contributor in this environment.  Clothing type is also a contributing factor.

We walk into the office touch our laptop, ZAP!  Walk to the lab, sit down and touch the batteries, ZAP!  Walk to a meeting, shake someones hand, ZAP!

ZAP, ZAP, ZAP!!!!

OMG - I have brought my prototype here to the death chamber.  This continent is certain death for a piece of electronics not in a chassis.  Certain death for the prototype!  I must take great care in wearing my ground wrist strap.  Great care must be taken to avoid "bricking", turning my equipment into a non-functioning device that can only be used as a paperweight, from here forward.

So far, so good.  I have been working in the lab on the prototype for a few days now.  Yesterday I had a slight scare as I was unable to program the board for an hour or two.  I found the problem and reported that back home for further investigation by the team in Wisconsin.  (Shout out to Alberto Rodriguez for manning the team of students while I am away.)

Today I will continue developing the code that runs our AWS and will be making preparations for tomorrow.  Tomorrow is our first deployment into the field to service one of the current generation AWS.  We will be taking a helicopter out into the vast tundra, searching for the tower from air and landing to make repairs.  I am here to learn from the current network of weather stations and observe the extremes that these devices will need to be designed to experience.

Back to work for me, ZAP!