Observational data from the ocean is tragically sparse and notoriously hard to collect. Spotter is out to change that with radically better design, outstanding data quality and a modern feature set. Through the Spotter Dashboard, you can access data from anywhere, change its settings, set alerts and notifications, and integrate with other tools and access your data via the API.
Spotter lets you collect ocean data where you need it and access real-time updates on the go.
Additionally, you can use the on-board SD-card to record time series of 3D displacement data for deeper analysis.
The Spotter dashboard and API provide access to real-time and historical data. The dashboard enables you to change your Spotters’ settings from anywhere in the world. You can set up alerts for weather conditions or get notified if your Spotter is outside of its geofence.
Spotter Dashboard File Download CSV Guide
For detailed documentation on available API endpoints and how to format requests, check out the Spotter & Smart Mooring API Specification
Regardless of the Spotter mode, Spotter always stores its geographical location (lat/lon) at 1-minute time intervals, and saves 3D (east, north, up) 2.5Hz relative displacement time series to the SD card.
In either of the Waves modes (Standard, Partition or Spectrum), Spotter stores the ensemble-averaged spectrum and cross-spectra for each sample period, plus an averaged sea surface temperature (SST) measurement every 10 seconds.
In Track mode, wave spectra and wave statistics are not stored on the SD card (they are not calculated in this mode).
To help you with the analysis of displacement and spectra data on the SD card, Sofar provides an open-source Python script you can use to collate all raw SD data files for position and displacement, and calculate directional moments from the cross-spectra, which are saved in easy-to-read formats.
Spotter Data Parsing Script (also on GitHub)