Aluminum beams that form the frame of the rack are mounted to the inside of the endcap. Power boxes along the beams hold the frame together. Mounted upright inside these boxes are the power merge and distribution boards. These power boxes then serve as the mounting points for the other internal electronics. As signal cables come in from underwater connectors through the endcap, they are routed to a pair of USB-serial adapters. Though the computer has only one serial port, it can communicate with up to 16 serial devices through these adapters.

 

Board Mounting

A series of mounting braces are built into the power boxes. All electronics inside the hull are first mounted to a removable tray, and then screwed down into the brace. Since each section is independently mounted, only four screws need to be removed to remove an entire component.

 

Compact Flash Reader

A compact flash card logs all sensor data during a run. After recovery, the flash card can be swapped with a blank one. Not only can another logged run immediately commence, but this allows for concurrent software and hardware debugging.