Above: Custom DE600 ready for 6 week deployment in remote Iceland to monitor glascial melting to gather Climate Change data.

  DE-600 Wireless Hydrophone Series

NEW – radio hydrophone or mobile (cellular) telephone hydrophone. The DE600 is available as a building block or as a complete wireless hydrophone system

WHAT IS IT?

DolphinEar ‘600’ WIRELESS (DE600) is a combination of hydrophone, pre-amplifier and mobile telephone interface.  It plugs into the accessory connector of any handheld mobile telephone and allows the user to dial up and listen to the hydrophone from any telephone in the world. This audio stream can be connected directly into a computer for storage on hard disk, or it can be recorded in a conventional manner.  We can supply the DE600 module and hydrophone with or without  a mating mobile or cellular telephone.

The DE600 is available in a number of forms: as a  wireless ready module that you can build into your radio or telephone equipment, or as a custom instrument  (as shown in the photo) that we can build to your own specifications. The mobile telephone version has built in compensation which helps to compensate for narrowness of the normal telephone bandwidth.

WHY DO YOU NEED IT?

Inside view showing batteries (gray-top) needed to operate the mobile phone (black object-lower left) and a smaller battery (blue object) that powered the DE600 (white object-center). The hydrophone is attached to a waterproof connector near the handle..

‘DE600’ lets you monitor underwater sounds from a wide geographic locations from your desk or lab.  You can conduct bio-acoustic surveys of an entire coastline, if necessary, in less time than it takes to drive to a research boat and prepare it for launch.

Your LISTENING POST

One advantage of using DE600 wireless hydrophones is that you can concentrate your analysis equipment in one location.  Audio streams can be connected directly from your telephone to your computer for storage on your hard disk.  Real time analysis is possible with many standard sound software.  We include a copy of spectrogram software with the DE600 package that lets you watch sounds as they come in from the remote site.  If you have a multi-channel sound card in your computer, you can monitor many channels at once – a feature that lets you design and build a realtime triangulation and tracking system.  Sounds can also be recorded on older multi-track recording equipment like DAT, mini-disc, or audio tapes.

USE WITH RADIOS

While we are emphasizing the use of mobile cellular telephones, the DE600 can also be connected to a VHF or UHF radio system. While the range will be limited to line-of-sight, typically less than 10 nautical miles, the frequency response of the system will be improved.  The DE600 connects to the microphone input (or can be wired into the radio) and outputs a continuous audio stream with a bandwidth that extends from a few Hz to beyond 22000 Hz.

USE WITH MOBILE TELEPHONES

Deploying one of the DE600 Wireless units at a glacial lake in Iceland. An ordinary Mobile telephone allowed people in 130 countries to direct dial and hear a melting glacier in winter.

Mobile telephone impose bandwidth limitations that at first glance seem like major limitations.  This is NOT the case in reality. Virtually all of the important long distance sound monitoring done with hydrophones occurs at frequencies below 3000 Hz.  The DE600 with it’s audio preprocessing system provide an end-to-end frequency range of 20-3500 Hz when using digital mobile telephones, like GSM handhelds.  This bandwidth makes it ideal for monitoring cetacean vocalizations, dolphin whistles, long distance whale calls, fish sounds, boat and ship noise, underwater acoustic modems, diver pingers, and a myriad of other sounds.

MOBILE TELEPHONE COVERAGE

Mobile telephone coverage has increased tremendously over the past decade. Coverage in remote parts of the world are possible in areas that have no regular landline service. Even in offshore applications there are many places in the world where great range can be obtained. For example, we achieved good communications with a mobile telephone 75 miles off the coast of New Zealand. Range depends greatly on the placement of the mobile telephone node as well as it’s height above sea level. But, large areas of the world are now covered by mobile networks. If you can get a signal at the desired location, then you can use the DE600. In other areas connection to satellite telephones are possible making this a truly global monitoring system – on land or sea!.

For the Iceland glacial project, The DE600 and it’s mobile telephone had to operate for the entire duration of the project – 60 days. There was no one there to charge batteries, or dust snow and ice off the equipment. Temperatures warmed to -10C but winds peaked at around 45 knots at times. It’s not a place you want to visit to fix broken equipment! We made sure there was enough battery capacity to last for a minimum of 90 days at -25 degrees Celsius! Once closed, the entire apparatus was watertight.

LISTEN TO SAMPLES

To hear what you can expect from the DE600 system, have a look at our DE600 SAMPLES section here.  We present typical sounds from whales, dolphins (including echo location clicks), fish, boats, and other sounds that have been reduced in bandwidth (20-3500 Hz) to simulate what you will hear when using the DE600.  You will be impressed by the excellent quality that is virtually indistinguishable from wide bandwidth hydrophone systems.

TYPICAL USES

Have a look at some typical uses here and here.

AVAILABILITY

While this is not ordinarily an off-the-shelf- item, we can fabricate these within a short time. Please enquire via E-mail.