We open-sourced our Antarctic wave buoys

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For over a decade I built and maintained the firmware for the Waves In Ice buoys — instruments that get deployed onto Antarctic sea ice, freeze in, and keep reporting wave motion back over Iridium satellite for months at a time. The data from the earlier generations contributed to peer-reviewed science, including a 2014 paper in Nature on storm-induced sea-ice breakup.

That work is now open source as WII5: wii5.sh3d.com.au — AVR firmware, schematics, PCB designs, enclosure notes, and the on-board wave-statistics mathematics, along with deployment logs going back to 2012.

Field notes on Scott Penrose — Embedded Systems & Software Consultant, Melbourne

We open-sourced our Antarctic wave buoys