Mounting Sensor on Floating Buoy

I know several people who have told me they’ve deployed Mayfly loggers in sensor stations on buoys or some other sort of floating platform, but I don’t think any of them have shared their methods or photos of their equipment.  We’ve done several ourselves over the past few years, and I’m attaching a photo of one of our most recent versions.  The logger box has a 2W solar panel mounted flat on the lid of the enclosure, a cell modem for data transmission, it all rests on a little plastic platform mounted to a rigid foam life-ring, and the 4 sensors are suspended in the water below the station.  We anchor it to the shore from above with a line on a pulley system so we can easily bring it over to the shore for cleaning or maintenance.  If you’re going to be anchoring it with a line to the lake bottom, then my only concern would be that the sensors might get tangled in the anchor line depending on how deep you’ve suspended your sensors, how much slack you have on the anchor line, and what sort of wind conditions or movement the station might make over time.  What sensors are you thinking of putting on the station?

Discovery-Center,

I have attached some photos of the WQ monitoring buoy I built.

I added an LED beacon to make it visible at night. I’m using a 20lb. kettlebell as the anchor with a steel cable and 3/8″ nylon rope with cable ties holding them together to prevent tangling. I added a float to the CTD sensor to ensure it maintains 18″ of distance away from the weight. It’s working well.