Medium Power J Boxes

ASHES Medium Powered Junction Box
Thompson Begins Leg 4

The back deck of the R/V Thompson was fully loaded with instruments, junction boxes, cable spools, and mooring components that were installed during Leg 4. Image Credit: Skip Denny, UW-APL; V14.

Low Voltage Node for PN1C

This low voltage node will be deployed during Leg 2 of the VISIONS'13 expedition at the Offshore site west of Newport Oregon at a water depth of ~600 m. It will provide a connection for the Endurance array Benthic Experiment Platform (BEP).

The main junction box (J-Box) for the Cabled Array is a Medium Power J-Box (MP J-Box) that receives input voltage at 375 Volts DC and an input data link at 1 GigE. The MP J-Box has one expansion port that passes on the 375 Vdc and 1 GigE data link. This port can be connected to another Medium Power J-Box, or to other specialized equipment that requires higher power or bandwidth, e.g., inductive power coupler systems in docking stations for charging batteries in mobile platforms, or high-definition cameras. In addition, the MP J-Box has eight instrument ports that provide 12 to 48 V and has 10/100BASE-T, RS232 or RS485 data links. There are 18 junction boxes on the system, operational since 2014. The juction boxes are built by the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and are easily reconfigured for specific platform and instrument requirements. The daisy-chain capabilities provide significant growth opportunities for the science community to add additional instruments and platforms.