OPEN SOURCE UNDERGROUND

Those of you who want to exercise your mind and body at the same time might balk at our suggestion that you take up caving. Yet, as we discovered in LXF244, when we looked at the technology of cave surveying, venturing underground can pose both a physical and a mental challenge.

However, the technology used in caving doesn’t have to end with hand-held electronic surveying tools and laser scanners, coupled with open source Linux software for post-processing and map preparation. Here, we’ll look at how technology can be used in exploring caves, photographing them, monitoring the underground environment for scientific research, and even minimising the risk involved in venturing into these potentially hazardous (my dad tells me it’s perfectly safe–Ed) environments.

You might be surprised to learn that our main theme isn’t the use of Linux software, although that does get a look in. Instead, we’ll mostly be thinking about technology that cavers can use while they’re underground. Laptops – even specially rugged ones – don’t survive long if they’re being dragged through muddy caves. For this reason, we’ll be looking at applications that run either on single board computers, or on microprocessors or microcontrollers that form part of dedicated hardware. Some of these applications are Linux-based, running on Raspberry Pi or similar hardware, while others are embedded applications that don’t run under any operating