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Saving the turtles

Many species of sea turtles come nesting on Costa Rica’s beaches, but mostly the leatherback, the green and the hawksbill. Not surprisingly  they are all endangered, especially from poaching. Feeling guilty about enjoying Costa Rica’s natural resources after speaking with Jerry (see Central America – month 1), I figured a bit of volunteering was in order so I decided to join ASTOP in Parismina, a small community on the Carribean coast whose beaches are nesting grounds for sea turtles and likewise a popular spot for their illegal hunting. Volunteering was harder than expected, but otherwise a very rewarding experience which I will make a detailed account of in the following paragraphs. Sadly, there are no photos of the actual volunteering work, everything happened at night and flashes can severely disturb these animals so taking picture was frowned upon. Too bad as they really are dinosaur-scale animals (lthe leatherback I saw was 1,60 meters of length and weighted around half a ton) and are out-of-this-world creatures, they spent most of their living time roaming the seas and only come on land to lay. Having me in the picture could have helped giving a sense of dimension, but trust me, your first encounter is jaw-dropping, and the best part is that it never gets old.

The association's HQ
The association’s HQ

Nesting

Turtles, being reptiles, lay eggs and to lay eggs, you need a nest. Nesting begins when a mother comes up on the beach to survey the area. Not every part of the beach is suitable, on occasions it will be too steep or on others there will be too much vegetation. The turtle will crawl around to judge the site and make her decision. It is quite common that it will return to the water, dissatisfied with what she saw but if the location provides to be suitable, clearing of the area will ensue. The turtle will flap her flippers around while turning on herself to remove as much foreign objects from the sand as possible and then proceed with the actual digging. Using her back flippers, the mother will scoop up sand out of a hole she will excavate as deep as her flippers allow her, throwing the sand away in the face of any unsuspecting volunteer crouching behind to measure the progress.

Once the nest has been made, the laying starts. The size and amount of eggs is species dependent, but for the leatherback and the green it hovers around an hundred with eggs being the size of billiard balls for the former and ping pong balls for the latter. Eggs come out two or three at the time and feature of soft shell to make the landing down in the nest a bit softer.

With the last egg having been laid, the hole is filled back up and the nest camouflaged as best as possible. It is no challenge to figure out where a turtle was laying eggs, the beach has obviously been disturbed, but finding the exact location of the egg cavity is no easy task and takes either a lot probing with a stick or the eye of an experienced guide.

The process by which these animals build their nest is quite amusing and impressive but it takes some time. They are certainly gracious creatures underwater but on land, they are clumsy, slow and depending of the species, in need to conserve energy as much as possible for the return journey around the globe. As such, they will move their flippers a couple times, rest for a while and repeat, with the whole nesting and laying taking up to and sometimes more than an hour. Suffice to say that during this time, the turtles are extremely vulnerable.

Logging and relocating

While laying eggs, turtles are utterly oblivious to what is happening around them. It is night time, they are near sighted out of the water and not very intelligent animals (“you know turtles, they are not very smart” as would often say Jerry). Talk about the reptilian brain, theirs is about the size of small carrot, most of their skull is occupied by salt-filtration glands. So when busy doing their business, they could not care less about what is happening around them and this made our work a whole lot more easier.

Right when the digging is done and the first egg is about to come out, we rush to the hole and fill it with as much sand as possible to make picking eggs up more convenient: nests for the leatherback are typically 80cm deep. As the turtle expels her eggs, you pick them up and put them in a bag. Simultaneously, another person, measures the turtle, inspects it for wounds and records the tag numbers if has any or tags it if it does not.

The hatchery
The hatchery

Once the turtle has been cataloged and her eggs have been gathered, it is left to return to the see on her own if it is a leatherback. They have a foul taste and are not preyed on for their meat. Green turtles on the other hand have to be guarded until they return to sea. Then eggs are taken back to the hatchery, where a nest is dug up and one by one they are counted and disposed in the nest as carefully as possible. There the eggs will mature over the next 60 days or so and hatch as newborns, which will be then collected and released back in the sea at different locations on the beach.

Patrolling and being a volunteer

Volunteer work mostly involves patrolling the beach at night in two shifts, one from 20h00 to midnight and the other from midnight to 4. Volunteers are teamed with local guides who have been formed with working with the turtles. When one is spotted, you follow their orders and try to be useful which may mean crouching behind a massive leatherback reaching for eggs deep down as she lays them, its a good thing they actually do not smell too bad. Turtles do not come out during day time, they rely on the sea being actually brighter than the beach to orient themselves. Sadly, in the process some get lost because of artificial light from the village, but usually, shining a flashlight in their face will guide them back to where you want them to go.

Patrols work on two fronts. They protect the nests by relocating them to a safe and guarded place, but they also act as deterrents to poacher by ensuring a consistent presence throughout the night. At any given time, two teams of local guides and volunteers are walking along Parismina’s 6 kms of beach. Poachers, when spotted, will most of time walk away, knowing that the practice is illegal and that they will quickly get framed on an island only inhabited by 500 people or so. As a result, the practice has severely lost popularity over the time the association has been active, and except for a few encounters every season (mostly with outsiders), poaching is very much a thing of the past. Mission has not been accomplished tough and never will, other threats exist in the form of dogs, pollution and should the association lower its guard, poachers will surely make a comeback.

Walking on loose sand is much harder than it looks: this is no romantic stroll on the beach. Mosquitoes and sand flies are out hunting and over time, stress builds up in all the lower joints from stepping on this kind of surface. Soon, your knees, your hips and your back start aching and your legs, forever itchy from the bites, become full of scars from the uncontrollable urge to scratch.  Even at nighttime, the heat and humidity are sometimes crippling in the Carribean, especially as you wear long clothing to protect yourself from the bugs. Turtle sightings are not guaranteed either: during two weeks of patrols, I saw two leatherbacks and one green turtle (quite exceptional since it is not their season yet). This can make the work seem unrewarding and compounded with the hardships of the patrols, has depressed more than a few volunteers into quitting earlier. Thankfully, we got plenty of rest during daytime, as besides the occasional garbage pick-ups and activity with the children, there was not a whole lot to do; I got plenty of work done, helped with the association’s computers, improved the Wikipedia article on Parismina and created one for the association. The rest of the day involved killing time by going for swims, playing pool, befriending other volunteers or developing a fascination for coconuts.

Homestaying

Milena, my host, with one of her brothers and her daughter
Milena, my host, with one of her brothers and her daughter

The association provides rooms to accommodate large groups, but most volunteers prefer homestaying with a local family, where for a small fee (17 US$ a day), you get a bed, three meals and your sweaty sand filled clothes cleaned. Not a bad deal, but what is most interesting is the cultural experience, which does not come from eating Costa Rican dishes (you can have anything, as long as its rice and beans) but from getting to chat with your hosts, share a moment watching tele-novelas or eavesdrop on village gossip. Parsmina’s inhabitants were religious and simple folks for the most part, but finding more about their outlook on life was enriching and appeasing. While literate, they were never given the opportunity to question anything and frankly this somewhat makes them happier. Sometimes, it felt like the earth was still flat, that the world ended outside the island’s boundaries and that the only measure of time that mattered was whether it was day or night.

In terms of material comfort, it was still way below anyone from up north would consider the minimum. A few houses were surprisingly luxurious (some said it had something to do with drug money), but most of them were wooden shacks with rusty corrugated iron roofs. Sleeping without a mosquito net was not an option and at nighttime, you had to share your living space with a wide array of critters: crabs, geckos, tarantulas, cockroaches, etc. Parismina had not been spared by modernity tough, every house was (somewhat) electrified, had running water and basic appliances such as a fridge, a stove and a television. Health wise, the village had its own clinic so everyone was generally healthy and had good dentition but just like the rest of Costa Rica, obesity and its related illnesses were rampant, owing to a diet heavy in starches and fried stuff.

In conclusion

I will keep fond memories of my time in Parismina. In the past, I was quick to criticize voluntourism as an attempt by foreigners at giving themselves good conscienc

On the beach at dusk
On the beach at dusk

e. In the past, I was wrong. Whatever money I spent to the village was handed directly to those providing me services or to the association so if anything, I brought a bit of prosperity to this otherwise secluded island but really, the interactions were genuine and the cause was one worth fighting for: the whole experience was unlike anything I had previously lived. Locals see volunteers come and go with only a handful of them staying long enough to truly have a lasting impact, but all go back to their corner of the planet better individuals and share that betterment at home with their family and friends. While it cannot escape the egocentricity of travelling, voluntourism still fits within a framework of responsible and slow tourism and certainly does away with its exaggerated hedonistic nature. It is an exercise in global awareness, promotes cultural sensibility and provides original experiences to those who try it. I for one will from now on try to devote a portion of my future travels to volunteering on projects like this.

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Nuts for coconuts, the amazing ways of consuming this exotic fruit

The coconut at the stage we are most familiar with

We know coconuts as the principal ingredient of a piña colada, we know coconuts as the tasty filling of a bounty chocolate bar, we know coconuts as the crucial part of a good curry, we know coconuts for their awesome taste but otherwise, we remain pretty ignorant about its many uses and life cycle.

Allow me to enlighten you with my recent experience with this incredible fruit and the knowledge I gathered from the locals in the Carribean. While not scientifical, I sincerely hope you will remember this little piece should you ever become stranded on a lonely tropical island. Otherwise, just take it as a little how-to guide for the next time you find yourself around a lot of coconuts.

An opened coconut

Coconuts as their name implies, are the nuts (or fruit (technically a drupe)) of the coconut palm tree. They grow everywhere around the carribean coast of Costa Rica and as far as I know, their extend is very large and in some cases, their productivity can turn them into a nuisance. There is no season for these trees, they just constantly produce all throughout the year, with every batch taking a couple months to mature. Coconuts are large fruits and do not biodegrade very easily. So much so that locals have to get rid of them (and their leaves) using bonfires.

A yellow coconut palm

Coco palms come into a few varieties which are mainly differentiated by the colours of their nuts: yellow, green, or something in between. If you are after pipa, you will prefer the green variety for its sweetness but when they age, the differences in flavor dissapear and the nuts all turn the same brown.

The pipa

A green coconut palm, preferred for pipa

There is a couple of vendors yelling “pipa fria” around you but cannot quite figure out what they are selling? Its coconut water, or “pipa”. A young coconut before it becomes ripe has a lot of water in it, easily 150 ml I would say. This water is sweet, very rich in minerals and feels very healthy to drink, if you can get past the weird taste (it’s somewhat of an acquired thing). Mike, another volunteer at the association has aptly called pipa “the gatorade of the jungle”: some local guides will not bring any water bottles on patrols, they will just reach up for a pipa or two.

A yellow “coco tierno” alongside a green pipa

The pipa is probably the stage of the coconut that is easiest to consume. Vendors in the street will slice the top off, put in a straw an refrigerate pipas but in nature, you just grab, smash and drink. Grab a pipa from the palm, smash it one or two times against the trunk until the nut cracks and drink the dripping water. It’s a bit messy but even though it is sweet, pipa will not get your hands all sticky.

The older pipa (or half-coconut)

Size comparison of a more mature coconut to a young pipa (which I am holding)

As they age and ripe, pipas grow bigger, thicker, and get harder to crack open. Should you succeed tough, you get rewarded with sweeter coconut water and a gelatinous substance called “coco tierno” (tender coco) that covers the inside surface. Coco water serves as a suspension for the endosperm of the nut and as it matures, will form this deposit. This substance is what is later going to become the white hard flesh of a ripe coconut and while the taste is somewhat different, it definitely hints towards that flavor.

The white gelatinous flesh can be scooped using a slice from the skin, notice the presence of shell

This tasty flesh can be scooped using a broken piece from the shell or a slice from the skin of the husk but in order to access it the nut has to be split in half. Without the proper tools (a machete), this is quite a challenge and requires a lot of smashing around and prying. At this stage, the very hard shell which we are used to crack with a hammer has started forming.

The nut (as we know it)

The tool of choice when working with coconuts: the machete

Now we come back into known territory, the ripe and mature nut is what we are used to finding in northern hemisphere supermarkets. What we are not familiar with however is how incredibly hard it is to get to the nut itself. Covered by a dry husk made of a thick skin and very fibrous material, this one it truly a “tough nut to crack”. Once open, little coconut water remains, most of it has coalesced into the very flavorful flesh we are all so fond of.

A ripe coconut with the husk removed

When on the ground and in the presence of humidity, the nut will obviously start to germinate. From one end of the nut, leaves will burgeon and from that same end a root system will emerge, all feeding on what is inside the nut and turning the flesh and water into a coconut sponge. Very rich, this sponge when be pressed will ooze oil (good for cooking) or can simply be eaten. Be careful, common wisdom has that eating too much of this will give you diarrhea.

A germinating coconut

These nuts are nature’s own small ships, known to have traveled by sea for thousand kilometers to land on a small remote island and populate it with this awesome tree. I did not get into the great many uses of the husk (textile), shell (jewelry, combustible) and the tree (lumber) itself, I did not cover the great many culinary, medicinal and industrial applications of this plant as well. I admit to be

Coconut sponge

wholly ignorant in this matter: the list of use cases for the coconut palm and its fruits seems virtually endless, I just know how to eat them raw.

Now we need to figure out how to grow these in Canada.

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Central America – Month 1

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Before the superman, a zip-line of about a kilometer.

Spatially speaking, Central America is a small place. Yet, it is very dense both in population and ecology. Very narrow and split in half by high mountains, the two sides feature differing climates with differing flora and fauna. The divide is also cultural, with the Pacific side populated mostly by Spanish descendants while the Carribean coast is home to a black population which emigrated there as slaves or free men.

Costa Rica

I have mixed feelings towards Costa Rica. While it has managed to retain its natural appeal, there is no denying that it has been irreversibly spoiled by tourism. Then again, I am part of the problem, going on a rant on how hordes of westerners (otherwise known as gringos) are such a nuisance to my travelling experience would amount to hypocrisy, but I cannot help but feel like a walking wallet in Costa Rica.

Thankfully, there are escape zones in the form of national parks, where for a moment, staring at absolutely majestic trees or spying on a couple of monkeys, you feel like you are witnessing what is most precious around here: Nature.

I started my time in this country by landing in San José, the capital. I only stayed a day and took a bus to Monteverde, where I met with friends from back home for a couple of days of hiking, some ziplining and one bungee jump. Came back to San José where I remained for a few days. Not that the city is great, one afternoon is enough to tour it, there is not a whole lot to do, but I was helping a friend fix his motorcycle and also really liked the hostel I was at (and to which I came back). As a token of appreciation, he took me to the top of Irazù volcano on his bike where, a good hour ahead of the tourist buses, we got to enjoy this gorgeous landscape by ourselves.

On top of Irazu volcano

More and more I am realizing that there is no such thing as a bad place. Your first impressions are very much governed by how pretty/safe/cheap/culturally rich a city is, that is a fact, but what will make the most difference are the people you will meet. There is fun to be had anywhere on this planet and in San José, I was blessed with the companionship of a motorcycling driving crazy stand-up comedian dutch guy and a swiss-german lady that is still a mystery to me.

So along with those two I headed to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca where for four days we chilled at the beach or in the hostel, listening to the rain on the tin roof and the sounds of the jungle. The motorcyclist still had problems with his machine but having given him all the emotional support I could, I crossed the border over to Costa Rica’s southern neighbor, Panama, in order to go explore an archipelago called Bocas del Toro.

Panama

Bridge to Panama

Everybody knows Panama because of its famous canal, but prior to travelling there, I knewnothing about this country. Very much like Costa Rica when it comes to architecture, cars, fast food joints and big bucks stores my experience in Panama was totally different from my two previous weeks in Costa Rica. Panama sports nature as beautiful as in Costa Rica, but with most Panameans living around their eponymous capital, the countryside feels empty. And with much less tourism going on, you get a break.

Going across the border was an interesting experience. I now know that crossings like the one I did are the norm around here, but for a moment, it was somewhat disorienting. You need a stamp out of the country you were in, you cross a derelict railroad bridge on foot, you get your visa for the country you are going to, you pay the entry fee and you are in. Simple, takes an hour, but there was a catch, I needed to show proof that I intended to travel out of the country. Normally, a plane ticket back home would have done the trick, but since I took a one-way flight, it had to choose between arguing in spanish with the custom agent that my travel insurrance validity period was proof enough or go buy a useless 15$ bus ticket that would take me back across the border into Costa Rica; thankfully, my spanish was convincing enough.

Downtown Old Bank, Bastimentos

Then, one hour by bus and a boat to take from a “garbage strewn town” (Almirante as described by the Lonely Planet) was all that separated me from my next destination. Well, not quite because Bocas del Toro is many islands, and I was recommended not to stay on the main one but to go to Bastimentos instead, and that was another boat ride away. A great decision it was. Bastimentos might also have a bit of a waste management problem, but Old Bank, the largest village, is right along the idea most have of a laid-back carribean place. Inhabited by black people who speak Guari-guari (a Spanish-english creole), the only road is a cement walkway (a much welcome break from souped-up taxis, old trucs, and general lack of street crossings elsewhere), you get places by taxi-boat and everyone is just genuinely friendly.

Scuba diving

You are still a tourist around here and it seems like their livelihood stems from that industry, but once you say no, the bothering and sales-pitching ends there, the dude sits with you at the table, lights up a joint, offers you some and strikes a conversation over village gossip . It could be their trick after all, because as you get friendly with the locals, you end up going on a tour with them anyway but seriously, what is there not to enjoy about a boat ride in the mangrove while listening to reggae, smoking some more, drinking beers and then going for a swim deep down in a cave with bats flying past you in the dark?

A Frenchman I met back in Costa Rica told me three lies are always told by everyone who sets foot in Bocas del Toro: that you are not going out tonight, that you are going out but only having one beer, and that you are leaving the next day, because you always end up sticking around longer.

Not only did I stay longer, but I ended up going back. The nearest beach from Old Bank was a 30 minutes walk in the jungle mud, but on arrival you were rewarded with you own private spot with no houses, boats, cars, nothing; just sand, palm trees and the odd pelican. The scuba diving was affordable and reefs were gorgeous. The hostel was one cool place and the local bars were frequented by like-minded travellers and locals. You fist bump everyone and within a couple days, they know your face and you know theirs, even the chinese corner store owner becomes nice to you.

A souped-up school bus in Panama city

I met with my cousin in Panama city, it was his spring break and had only a week to spend. There we saw the canal and climbed up mount Ancon to get a nice view of the city and we both felt that was it. Panama city looks like Miami without the beach (too polluted). Unlike any other central-american city, it is full of skyscrapers and hotels. The wealth disparity is immense between the districts and after short while we concluded that those high-rise luxury apartment building were just residences for fiscal evasion: all the lights are out at 21h00 and given the density the streets should be teeming with life.

Swimming in a cave

So we quickly, we bought bus tickets back to Bocas del Toro where we did more muddy walks around the jungle, got invited to a locals house for beers visited that cave I wrote about a couple of paragraphs ago and did some diving. I could have seriously stayed  for longer but my cousin’s time was up. We took a bus across the country to David and bade farewell because my cousin’s time was up. I slept an extra night in David to get some work done during the day and then suffered through another border crossing into Costa Rica.

Costa Rica (again)

I should have made a stop in Corcovado national park to hike Costa Rica’s highest mountain, but climbing up peaks alone is not as fun, so I pressed on to Quepos, the gateway to Manuel Antonio national park.

Gimme snacks!

The place is a bit of a joke. Manuel Antonio is the country’s smallest park yet it is the most visited. The coast line around is peppered with resorts. In the lineup to get inside the park (wtf a lineup?), I overheard people complaining about the waiting. Read you guide next time. The park is more like a beach/zoo combination than a conservation area. Meeting with monkeys is a certainty and they will be a meter away but that is because they’re after your snacks. Homo sapiens sapiens of all coulours and sizes are to be seen everywhere and if you are lucky, you might see a sloth or two through the binoculars of an over-expensive guide. I knew what to expect but even there, it was a disappointment.

They have fairly large trees around these parts…

Having not had enough of the pricey resort packed places apparently, I went to Jacò next. There at least the beach was nice and I was travelling with two girls from Québec, but the town itself was just a strip of surf shops an pricey restaurants. We spent a day hiking in and around Carrara national park, the one place in Costa Rica where the Scarlet Macaw is a common sight. We caught just a glimpse of them but definetly could hear their chicks: these birds are loud and just like Toucans, make a racket of guttural an unpleasant sounds normally assimilated to mammals. I did get to see one from up close in Monteverde because it had been tamed; beautiful creature. Outside the park was el puente de los cododrilos, or crocodile bridge, where, as its name implies, 20 or more of these massive reptiles can be seen basking in the sun or floating around at any given time.

Saving the turtles

While in San José over a few beers, I had the chance to meet with someone working for a sea-turtle grassroots conservation project (soon to be non-profit). His convincing argument was that everyone who got to enjoy a bit of Costa Rica’s nature ought to give back a bit of time to preserve it. Knowing I had all the time in world, I anouced him that within the coming weeks, I would come over to his village and help out for a while. My swiss friend made the same promise and found herself going there from Puerto-Viejo.

On my way out of Jacò back to San José, I sent this organization an e-mail stating that if they had a working internet connection, I would be glad to volunteer. Their answer took a while to come, but it was positive.

ASTOP (Associacion Salvemos Las Tortugas de Parismina) is the name of organisation and their goal is basically to protect their beach, a nesting ground for three species of sea turtles (Leatherback, Green and Hawksbill), from being poached. This practice used to be common place as those animals provided both a source of food and income (sea turtle eggs are thougt to have aphrodisiac properties), but now being critically endangered, there is an ongoing conservation effort to protect what little remains of their once widespread populations.

Volunteering over there consists mostly of patrolling the beaches at night and gathering eggs to bring them to a guarded hatchery to prevent them from being poached. As I write those lines, I have already been on one patrol, but since this write-up is already very lengthy, I will leave this for a separate post.

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The obsolete computer parts sarcophagus (or coffee table if you prefer)

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A close up of the finished table with its lighting on.

I’ll admit I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to computer parts. Over the years, I have collected a fair amount of equipment with the hope than one day, some of it might come handy. Well, a GeForce 3 from 2002 is not like wood scraps or loose electric cables, the more time passes, the more it becomes useless. Standards evolve and with them connectivity; there is just no way this type of video card will fit in a modern computer (now that everyone uses laptops too). I have had a need for small servers for some projects and an old PII with linux on it would have made a perfect candidate, but then again, the power consumption of those machines are just not worth it. A small embedded computer or shared hosting would pay itself back in no time.

One day, I came across this project through Make and thought it would be a perfect way to give purpose to all that junk, especially that like the inventor of the first table, some of it was from my first machines and while it was now devoid of computational value, still retained sentimentality. Electronic circuits have a mesmerizing power for the knowledgeable and the profane likewise. While staring at an A7N8X for hours will not give the non-engineers any further understanding on how bits are turned into pretty pictures on a monitor, it could nonetheless spark educative discussions on the general role that it plays into this process and at least help dissipate the “black box” effect of modern personal computers. So I proceeded to file the link in my ideas folder, knowing I was then lacking the woodworking skills and tools required for this type of project, and at the time not really thinking I would ever come to have my own computerpartscoffeetable.

A CAD plan of the table. Save a few millimeters, the end result is the exact same.

Coming back from some time in Europe and having only worked with my brain for over a year (except for this project), the time felt right for a physical challenge. Drawing inspiration from this other computer parts table, I opened FreeCAD, got drawing and in an evening came up with a design of my own: something less imposing, with more modern lines, all without sacrificing the “sarcophagus” effect.

This is not a how-to so I will spare the building details but for those that are interested, feel free to download the CAD file, leave a comment or write me. Basically, the table is build around a frame of particle board which also serves as the bed for the parts. At both ends of the frame are two dark walnut glue-ups with some chamfering all finished with several coats danish oil. Frankly I was not expecting the end-result to be so stunning, the images do not do it justice. The panes of glass fit in a grove carved in the leg members and with the top glass being 10mm (3/8), this makes one solid and stiff piece of furniture. It takes two fully gown men to move it around.

The table is lit up from two led strips at a 45 degree so they can illuminate both the top and their respective side. Powering the strip is the actual only functional circuit of the whole display: a switching power supply I built for the occasion (also something that had been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years).

Money-wise, the project was a bit on the expensive side. I did maximize reuse and recycling, but as every woodworker will confirm, precious wood will cost you, in fact a lot more that what is normally found in hardware stores. Add to the total the price of thick custom cut glass panels and the addition is somewhere around 400$. A coffee table at Ikea is a tenth of that price, but the commonalities ends with function: there is nothing like the quality, craftsmanship, the beauty of a solid piece of wood furniture.

Since I am travelling again and did the finishing touches the day before my departure, I cannot provide a picture with a few happy people around some empties. For now, it is quietly sitting in my workshop under a protective blanket, patiently awaiting my return for merry moments with friends or a lazy coffee the Sunday morning after.

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OD3D: a software oscilloscope for 3-dimensional visualization of signals

Project

OD3D stands for the french « Oscilloscope Digital 3 Dimensions » which means Digital 3D Oscilloscope. It was me and my partner’s 4th year university project. Simply put, it’s a completely functional computer based oscilloscope that works on three axes instead of two. This permits more complex visualization of waveforms, especially in the historical mode, where you can see what the signal looked like many samples ago. Any way, If you want to better understand what it does more than a classical oscilloscope, I urge you to look at the video above and the screenshots below.

It was developed under the course of a year mostly during our free time. Even if it did not ranked very well compared to other projects (try to match the bling factor of a motion-sensing automated gun-turret …), we had plans to continue its development until life took us somewhere else (and made us switch to Unix based OSes). Sadly, it sat on our hard drives for more than four years before we decided that it would be a shame to let so much work rot to obsolescence so we decided to release the whole source under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license so someone can hopefully use it in another project or draw inspiration from it.

The goal of this project was to offer greater possibilities in signal visualization, build a complete, powerful and versatile software oscilloscope suite and more generally explore something new. Someone told us it could have interesting applications in conjunction with sonars (3D waterfall display) and we almost go it to act as a semiconductor curve tracer (Id vs Vds vs Vgs).

Short architectural descriptions

The whole project is actually made of two programs, the oscilloscope itself and the generic 3D engine.

We did not get as far as commenting the whole thing. In fact, there are almost no comments at all in the code but if you actually follow the logic and understand the pipeline architecture, you should have no problem figuring out how the oscilloscope part of it works. As for the 3D engine, I suggest you start with checking the demo that comes with it. Furthermore, it is not completely debugged, so you should expect it to crash pretty often.

 Oscilloscope

During the actual implementation of the oscilloscope, we tried to abstract things as much as possible in order to make the project extensible. For now, it can only use sound cards or a virtual signal generator as an input, but it would not be too hard to use a USB device (another thing we were working on) or some other custom solution. This also holds true for all the modules that sit in between the source input driver and the actual display (trigger and resolution filter), where the architecture enables you to easily build and integrate one of your own (like a spectrum analyzer or a data logger). The whole thing becomes an oscilloscope when you order and connect those modules in a specific manner: Input->Trigger->Display.

Many Inputs can connect to the same display or many displays can be connected to the same input. There are no limits on the number of channels or displays; you can go as far as your hardware resources will permit you. Back in 2008 when we presented it, we ran it on an Athlon 800 with 256MB of RAM and a GF2 MX400 to show that it was not very taxing on resources. If you want more technical information, go take a look at the specificities section.

3D engine

The 3D engine (named Motr3D) was developed as a standalone solution as opposed to being totally integrated in the oscilloscope, this means that it can be used for other stuff, like in the demo that comes in its executable folders, where we recreated a the solar system. As opposed to the oscilloscope, which is pretty functional, the 3D engine is very primitive and will not get you beyond displaying and moving polygons and basic shapes around. From the start, it was programmed to be as abstract from graphics API as possible (it uses Direct3D but it could be implemented with OpenGL), be fully object oriented and have a runtime architecture like a tree, where every 3D object (even the camera) is part of a tree and inherits from a common type. Even if the project consisted of an oscilloscope, the 3D engine is the part we are most proud of because it was both very challenging (80% of the programming time) and by far the most fun we had programming something. If you want more technical information, scroll down to the specificities section.

Specificities

Oscilloscope

  • Supports as many channels as your hardware will permit.
  • Supports as many displays as your hardware will permit.
  • Abstracted pipeline architecture for modularity.
  • Can work with any type of input, but only sound cards or a virtual signal generator are implemented.
  • Programmed in C# for the Microsoft .NET framework 2.0.
  • Has been tested on Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

3D engine

  • Fully object oriented in architecture.
  • Supports many primitives (cube, line, spheres, etc.)
  • Programmed in C# for the Microsoft .NET framework 2.0.
  • Works with Direct3D (managed) but can be made to work with OpenGL.
  • Has been tested on Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

Source: OD3D.zip

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