Furthermore, it breaks new ground by giving access to acoustic turbidity through the backscattered ultrasonic energy (or echo) by the suspended particles. This is used to monitor the suspended sediment load within a few meters depth.

The Peacock UVP pushes further the limits of the UVP technology in terms of weight and energy consumption. This module is based on the same principle as our UB-Lab and UB-Flow, but on a completely new design, including an innovative architecture of the emission stage and the demodulation process. The signal processing was optimized for this new architecture and includes coherent Doppler estimation, automatic gain control, static echo filter, pulse coding and blind zone compensation. The result is a much lighter (14 g), smaller (21 x 85 mm) and low power (0.5 to 1 W) circuit that can drive two channels (transducers) from 400 kHz to 3.6 MHz. According to the settings, the device can switch alternatively from one channel to the other. The Doppler signal processing provides many information as mean velocity (projected on the transducer axis), velocity standard deviation, SNR and echo amplitude profiles on the given transducer. Saturation and Nyquist jump information are also given along the profile. Temperature, plus pitch and roll angles can also be measured. Precise and accurate velocity profiles are measured along the acoustic beam with a high spatial resolution (down to 0.73 mm in water). The communication with the Peacock UVP goes through Modbus protocol via RS485, which can be wired through USB directly on the computer, and allows to transmit up to 5 profiles per second (for 100 cells).

The Peacock UVP, designed by UBERTONE, breaks new ground for a wide range of applications and make it perfect for being embedded in systems where reliability, robustness, consumption, size or weight matter.

The supplied product is an electronic board. It is possible to provide the USB adaptor (for communication and powering). It is also possible to add a DC-DC module to expand the voltage range. On the photo above, the Peacock UVP is shown in a case for development, with an USB cable for communication and powering on one side and two BNC connectors for transducers on the other side.

A driver library is available on Github. It is a Modbus API written in Python for measurement control of Ubertone's Peacock UVP.

Ubertone can help you in the integration of the board in your project. As an OEM instrument, there is a minimum volume order.

For proof of applicability and performance studies, we propose to buy or rent a UB-Lab P, which needs no software development before achieving measurements.