Aaron Curtis places a depth sonar into a surfboard, begging the question: why don’t they all have this feature?

Out surfing, I often wonder how deep the water is, and suspect based on wave behavior that I’m over a deep spot or a shallow spot. Waves generally break when they enter shallow water (there are various conflicting formulas for figuring out exactly how shallow). At beach breaks like San Onofre Bluffs, the best place to wait for a good wave is right over a sandbar, and the sandbars can move around from day to day.

One day I decided to stop wondering and find out. I figured I could build a depth sensing sonar into my board and maybe I’d learn a thing or two about the sand underneath me, the dynamics of waves, and maybe even improve my surfing. Along the way I also learned some things about my surfboard, glue, wireless power, etc. It was fun and it works so I figured I’d share all the details here.

The project uses a Raspberry Pi Zero and a Blue Robotics Ping Sonar (Ping2D).

See more in the article here and the GitHub repo.