Medium Power J Boxes

Secondary Nodes
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).

Full-size RSN Test Frame

This full-sized Junction Box frame was sucessfully deloyed and recovered in the International District Hydrothermal Field at Axial Seamount using the ROV ROPOS during the August 2011 VISIONS '11 expedition. During the VISIONS'13 cruise two fully built out medium-power J-Boxes will be deployed here that will provide power and communications to extension cables and sensors deployed at the vent sites. The sensors will include a digital still camera, mass spectrometer, fluid and DNA samplers, bottom pressure and tilt sensor, a temperature-chlorinity probe to measure boiling fluids exiting the vents, and a short-period seismometer.

The Initial RSN system will use two types of junction boxes (J-Box). The first type 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 will have 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 will be 13 Low Power and Medium Power Junction boxes on the system.