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Two such housings were built for HOBI Labs
for enclosing electronic equipment aboard an oceanographic research buoy. The housings were made from 1/2" polycarbonate for protection from sunlight and crashing waves. The customer painted the inside of the housings to make them opaque. The nine holes on the front are for customer-supplied underwater connectors. |
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The Ferret 240 is a ruggedized, waterproof IR imager,
designed for fire, police, military, and security use.
It produces infrared video that is calibrated to
temperature of the objects in view. The Sexton Company
designed the waterproof housing and internal structures
to hold the electronics, lens, video screen, and
eyepiece. Photo courtesy of
Compix Incorporated. |
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This is the second in a series of housings for Long Beach Dive. The earlier version housed any of several off-the-shelf GPS units. This one is designed around a custom system that uses a magnetic wand to activate magnetic reed switches in the control panel. The antenna is on a float at the surface, connected by a cable to this unit. The Sexton Company designed and manufactures the housings to the specifications of this customer. Contact for
Long Beach Dive
for more information. Photo by John McGeever. |
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This housing is for a Sony PCM-M1 DAT recorder, used by a graduate student at University of Hawaii to study butterfly fish. These fish make sounds that are a higher frequency that humans can hear, so this professional grade audio recorder was picked because it can
record frequencies up to 140 KHz.
The chrome-shelled connectors are for inputs from two hydrophones, and the black shelled connector is for taking the signal to the input of a video camera in another housing. All of these connectors are
wet-mateable for ease of use in the field. |
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This is a shallow-water housing for a Licor
LI1400 datalogger.
This special-purpose instrument periodically takes and records readings from whatever instruments are connected to it. In this case, the Environmental Protection Agency uses this setup to monitor light levels and other parameters in an estuary in Florida. |
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| Same housing as above, now shown mounted in a frame with the other instruments and sensors. This unit is deployed by a diver into sea grass beds and left for a couple of weeks at a time. The unit is then retrieved, data downloaded, fresh batteries installed, and put into another location. |
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This is another housing built for the same
datalogger, but with different requirements. Because this one needed to be deployed for a longer timeframe, it needed an external battery.
In addition, its array of sensors were mounted at a distance from the
datalogger, so wet-mateable connectors were chosen. Two such housings were built, so they could be exchanged underwater, leaving the cables to the sensors undisturbed. |
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Above housing in a Pelican case modified for permanent anchoring to seafloor. The housing is held in place with a series of overlapping plates and one Velcro strap.
The sensor cables enter the case through the hole at far left corner, are strain-relieved by tie wraps on the back wall, and curve around to the connectors at the right end of the housing. |
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This is another custom housing for the same
datalogger, this time needed for a depth of 200 feet.
The flanges along the top and bottom corners have mounting holes, by which the unit is suspended by bungee cords inside a PVC pipe frame, along with the sensors. This unit is placed by divers form the University of Tampa on reefs in Florida. Click
here to view a video clip of this datalogger. |
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This is another housing for the same datalogger, this time designed to be used by a free-swimming diver.
The light sensor is the device that looks like a light bulb on the end of a flexible arm. In this case the graduate student from University of California at Davis uses this instrument to measure the amount of sunlight falling on areas that are under overhanging reefs in the tropics. There is trigger, by which the diver can tell the unit to record a reading. |
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Same housing as above, shown as delivered in a Pelican case with custom cutouts for the housing, sensor, battery charger, and other peripheral equipment.
Many of our housings are shipped with Owners Manuals, a kit of spare parts, and sturdy cases for travel and storage. |
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This is a 500-foot depth housing to enclose an ultrasonic thickness measuring gauge from
Dakota Ultrasonics
for use by commercial divers to measure the remaining steel thickness in closed cylindrical legs of giant offshore drill rigs.
The six buttons on the instrument are actuated by sliding the shaft side-to-side, and rocking the handles to touch the upper or lower row of buttons. |
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| Same housing as above, showing a way of making the connectors self-connecting when the housing door is put into place. This eliminates the need for internal cables and maintains the impedance characteristics of the two coax connectors. The yellow fabric serves as a flexible hinge to keep the door from getting lost or installed backwards. |
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This set of housings for a fluorescence meter used underwater by a professor at the University of Delaware.
It needed to have two housings, the smaller one for the sensor, with an external trigger on it, and the other for the
datalogger. Once again, it is delivered in Pelican case to best survive the rigors of travel. |
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| The smaller housing for the detector of the Fluorescence Meter is permanently wired to the larger datalogger housing, and incorporates a trigger (the stainless steel rod) to tell the system when to take a reading. |
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| This is a shot of the researcher using the meter to measure the photosynthetic activity of plant leaves underwater. |
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This is a housing for an off-the-shelf GPS unit. Since radio waves do not travel underwater, the antenna is mounted on a float, and its signal carried down the yellow coax cable to the housing held by the diver.
In this case, the Sexton housing is used by the manufacturer of the system, Long Beach Dive. Contact them for more information. |
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This housing is one of eight used to contain instruments on the corners of a barge that was partially sunk to launch a giant drilling rig in Louisiana.
The customer specified the inside dimensions, depth requirement, mounting points, and pass-through holes. |
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This housing is for using an electronic synchronization slate made by Deneke Enterprises
in wet filming situations.
Since this unit is operated by the second assistant cameraman (who is always stationed to the left of the cameraman), it is designed to be operated with the left hand only. There is a handle on the back for holding the unit and a thumb trigger that the operator can use to open the sticks. By letting go of the trigger, the sticks close, stopping the display at that instant, so the time stamp image shows on all cameras that can see this unit. |
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| This photo, provided by Michael
Hoffman, shows the slate protected from the surrounding water in a wet filming situation. Mike
is now the sole distributor of this housing for us. |
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Housing for Acuity Research AR4000 infrared viewer for use underwater. Customer needed only 10-foot depth, but this housing is actually rated to 60 feet.
Note large hole in the front, which allows the red plastic front of the instrument to have direct contact with the water, rather than having the light rays travel through additional water-to-plastic, plastic-to-air, and air-to-plastic interfaces. There is an o-ring seal on the inside of the front of this housing to keep the water out. Note also that the instrument front surface is angled at 6 degrees to reduce internal reflections. The same angle is replicated in the front of this housing. |
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| Same instrument as above, but needed to have the instrument look out the side of the housing through a front-silvered polished aluminum mirror, which can be adjusted precisely to 45 degrees. The light port is a special borosilicate glass, which is inset into the side of the housing at an 8-degree angle, again to reduce internal reflections. |
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See More Examples of
Underwater Instrument Housings
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Underwater Housings for Still Cameras |
Underwater Housings for Video Cameras
Surf Housings for Still Cameras |
Surf Housings for Video Cameras
Instrument Housings |
Telemetry Housings |
Other types of Housings
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![The smaller housing for the detector of the Fluorescence Meter is permanently wired to the larger datalogger housing, and incorporates a trigger [the stainless steel rod] to tell the system when to take a reading](images/photos/IH/IH-HPEA-84a.jpg)
