
Planning scientific equipment for Antarctic conditions - owenversteeg
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/science/science-support/scientific-equipment
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Unibod
Working in a system where people say: "STS has a low temperature environmental
chamber which is used by STS staff for equipment development and testing down
to −85 Celsius. It may be possible for you to use this chamber to temperature
test your own equipment" is what science is about, we have learned from our
mistakes, can we help you to not do the same.

The reference to XLR connectors, an aged technology, shows the ruggedness of
the the design, a good example of the evolution of survival of the fittest in
design. It is not the best, but the most fit.

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sirk1882
Battery systems aren't designed for temperatures below -40°C.

I'm currently looking at building a cold weather tower for use as a non-
rotator SatNOGS ground station.

One solution I've found is using snow as an insulator. If you insulate a
battery box then cover it in one foot of snow you can effectively insulate
batteries against cold temperatures.

Tests I've conducted with temperature sensors: -34°C air temperature. -24°C
under 2" of snow. -17°C under one foot of snow. That's without heating.

If you use a heater and an alternative energy source, you can keep the
batteries warm and toasty within their optimal operational specification of
0°C to 20°C.

I'm in the Canadian arctic and seasonal winter temperatures are between -35°C
and -44°C.

I'm also looking at using SkelCaps from Skeleton Technologies out of Estonia.
I haven't tested them yet, but I suspect their curved graphene ultra
capacitors should do quite well in the extreme cold.

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etrautmann
I did robotics research in Antarctica. The key challenge I encountered was
designing an appropriate interface for interacting with a robot in that
environment. Coding was completely impossible when it was -25 or -40 out, but
we still needed a minimal interface for interacting with a semi-autonomous
robot, and few off the shelf solutions worked well, so we basically ended up
with ruggedized laptops and minimal interaction.

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gpm
Did you consider something along the lines of a keyboard in a glovebox with a
heater minus the gloves?

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avar
I haven't been to Antarctica but have done a lot of cold weather hiking
(mostly in Iceland) with various electronic equipment.

One tip relevant to this article that you can use to increase the performance
of battery powered electronic equipment by keeping it heated.

Of course you're not going to bring along dedicated heating equipment, but you
yourself function as a portable heat generator.

So e.g. if you need to carry a radio you can arrange your clothing so it's
strapped to your chest with the battery facing your body, with all your
clothing going over the radio, and a hands-free headset on a wire going up to
your neck to use the radio.

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jacques_chester
My father did two winter tours with ANARE, at Casey and Davis, as the base
communications technician. What I gleaned is this: if the diesel ever freezes,
you are buggered.

To me the idea of being stranded in a sunless chillvoid for months on end
seems like a prelude to actual hell. But he loved it. He truly loved it.

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abraae
This is interesting but I don't know how practical it is.

The key takeaway is...

> The single most important thing is to test your equipment before taking it
> to Antarctica. This is obvious, but many people don't do it and their
> research programs are compromised by equipment failures which are completely
> avoidable. [....] Make sure that your equipment works correctly at the
> temperatures you will encounter in Antarctica.

But no advice is given on where to find a test environment that can simulate:

> Temperatures may occasionally go below −80 Celsius in far inland regions.

> The wind can blow up to 200 km/h in coastal regions, and it will carry grit
> in areas where there is no snow cover.

> Antarctica has very dry air which results in large amounts of static
> electricity, particularly when the wind is strong. Static electricity can
> instantly destroy unprotected electronic equipment.

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wl
Commercial environmental test labs exist and are widely used to test
electronic equipment. The ESD testing shouldn't be an issue for any of these
labs, but the temperature and grit testing might be a little extreme for the
equipment at some labs. Still, my experience has been that these labs are
eager to solve any unusual environmental testing requirements and they can
probably figure something out.

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jjoonathan
Sure, but not on a shoestring budget.

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CaliforniaKarl
Tangentially-related: Wendover's video on Antarctica:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s3j-ptJD10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s3j-ptJD10)

