Who this is for: the field scientist on the vessel or the beach, and the operador running the campaign.
Before you start: your drifters are adopted into the campaign and the gateway is running. Starting and ending launches and marking drifters need an operador or an administrador.
Start a launch
A launch is a batch of drifters released together. Start one when the first drifter goes into the water:
- Choose Start launch in your campaign.
- Pick the drifters on deck, or choose Select all on deck.
- Check the release time, then start the launch.
The launch runs until you end it. Each launch is listed under Launches, newest first.
While the drifters are out
Fleet lists every drifter in the campaign, with the most urgent problems first. For each one you see its status and how long it has been that way, its launch, its last reading, its battery, how many satellites its position used, and its firmware version.
A drifter's status comes from the last reading to arrive:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Reporting | Readings are arriving. |
| Stale | Nothing for three reporting intervals: a minute and a half at the default of one report every thirty seconds. |
| Silent | Nothing for a day. |
On deck, Data stream is the quickest check that the fleet is still reporting: readings appear as they arrive, newest first, and you can filter them by drifter.
Out of range and back
Drifters reach the gateway over a LoRa radio mesh. When a drifter drifts out of range, it keeps its last 24 hours of reports. Once it is back in range and the gateway stays within reach long enough, the gateway collects that backlog and the readings appear in the record once each, in their place in time. So a drifter can be out of range for up to a day without losing anything.
Two limits to know:
- The backlog is held in memory. If the drifter restarts or its battery runs flat, the reports it was holding are gone from the mesh.
- Reports older than a day exist only on the drifter's own storage card.
If the gateway's internet connection drops, nothing is lost either: the gateway keeps every reading and sends it when the connection returns.
When something looks wrong
Clock off. If a drifter's latest reading is far from the time it arrived, its page says the clock is off and its readings are marked suspect. The drifter is still reporting, and its charts keep the time the drifter recorded. The warning clears with its next live reading.
Weak position. A position taken with a weak satellite fix is drawn as weak on the map and in the Fleet list, so you can tell it apart from a good one.
Out of water. A drifter on deck or lifted reports that it is out of the water. That is never counted as being inside a mat.
Bring them back
Mark each drifter recovered from Fleet as it comes back on deck.
End the launch when the last drifter is back on deck. If some are still out, the confirmation lists them with their status. You can recover them first, or end the launch anyway: ending anyway marks them lost unless they are recovered later. Their readings stay in the record either way, and readings keep arriving whether the launch is open or ended.
Each launch has its own page: when it was released and ended, its drifters, which came back and which were lost, their tracks, and Export this launch for a complete copy in CSV and GeoJSON.
Lost, retired, and released again
A person's mark always wins over what the readings say. A drifter marked lost stays lost even if a reading arrives from it later, until someone changes the mark.
- Adopting a recovered or lost drifter into a campaign releases it again and clears the mark. It stays the same drifter, with its history.
- A drifter taken out of service for good is retired. A retired drifter cannot be released again.