Wave Buoys

Picton Harbours maintains three wave buoys in the Marlborough Sounds.

Wave buoys are located at:

Data is stored in a data warehouse and provided to partner organisations. Partner feeds are available as NMEA via a UDP stream or TCP server or as JSON.

The the three buoys have different types of data and different update periods.

Northern Entrance

The sensor types are:

D = Linear Displacement
F = Frequency
A = Angular Displacement

The units are:

M = Meters
S = Seconds
D = Degrees

The sensor names are:

HSIG = Significant Wave Height
HMAX = Max Wave Height 1
HMAX2 = Max Wave Height 2
PDOM = Dominant Wave Period
PAVG = Average Wave Period
PMAX = Maximum Wave Period
MWD = Mean Wave Direction
PITCH = Pitch
ROLL = Roll

For NMEA service, two sentences are produced each minute. Data strings are repeated for 30 minutes and changed when the buoy reports in with new data. If the buoy misses a report, the NMEA data will stop after 40 minutes. Each sentence is followed by a CR/LF.

NMEA format sentence example, available on port 45052:

$WIXDR,D,0.134,M,HSIG,F,02.62,S,PDOM,F,02.62,S,PAVG,A,4.033,D,MWD*03
$WIXDR,D,0.234,M,HMAX,D,0.170,M,HMAX2,F,5.859,S,PMAX*5F

JSON format example:

{
  "sensor_id": "pcn.ne_buoy.svs_603.1",
  "timestamp": "2022-03-03T21:21:00Z",
  "measurement_id": "896d3d3c7a530aea77decebdfa86a64b",
  "hsig": 0.189,
  "pdom": 6.557,
  "pavg": 6.557,
  "mwd": 49.81,
  "hmax": 0.305,
  "hmax2": 0.24,
  "pmax": 11.13,
  "pitch": -1.028,
  "roll": 0.886
 }

Tory Entrance Seaview

The sensor types are:

D = Linear Displacement
F = Frequency
A = Angular Displacement

The units are:

M = Meters
S = Seconds
D = Degrees

The sensor names are:

HSIG = Significant Wave Height
HMAX = Max Wave Height 1
HMAX2 = Max Wave Height 2
PDOM = Dominant Wave Period
PAVG = Average Wave Period
PMAX = Maximum Wave Period
MWD = Mean Wave Direction
PITCH = Pitch
ROLL = Roll

For NMEA service, two sentences are produced once every 15 minutes. Every message on this service is new data. Each sentence is followed by a CR/LF.

NMEA format sentence example, available on port 45055:

$WIXDR,D,0.472,M,HSIG,F,10.377,S,PDOM,F,7.089,S,PAVG,A,175.133,D,MWD*36
$WIXDR,D,0.694,M,HMAX,D,0.600,M,HMAX2,F,12.540,S,PMAX*62

JSON format example:

Tory Entrance Waverider (NIWA)

The sensor types are:

D = Linear Displacement
F = Frequency

The units are:

M = Meters
S = Seconds

The sensor names are:

HMAX = Maximum Wave Height
HSIG = Significant Wave Height
PAVG = Average Wave Period

For NMEA service, one sentence is produced each minute. The same measurement is repeated for 30 minutes before an updated measurement is supplied. Sentences are followed by a CR/LF

NMEA format sentence example, available on port 45053:

JSON format example: