Welcome to EnviroDIY, a community for do-it-yourself environmental science and monitoring. EnviroDIY is part of WikiWatershed, an initiative of Stroud Water Research Center designed to help people advance knowledge and stewardship of fresh water.
New to EnviroDIY? Start here

Activity

  • Jesse posted an update 5 years, 11 months ago

    Hi,
    I’m excited to be a part of the forum. Let me kick things off with an anomaly! I have a Mayfly with a gauge sensor and I went to go collect the data and clean the probe. When I sat down to look at the data, I was getting negative readings. It was fine and then the depth got lower and lower and then suddenly went negative. Has anyone had this problem before???

    • Hello Jesse, great you joined.
      Can you need to provide a bit more information.
      It is **normal** ~ though perhaps undesirable and non-intuitive ~ for a depth measuring instrument to show a slightly negative depth when outof water. Depending on the type of physical sensor they don’t know 0.0 – they have to be calibrated for it, and even that, unfortunately can drift,
      When there is a need to measure low stream flows, what I do is make sure the sensor is in a “pool” of water up stream of the flow measurement place. I try and make sure that the sensor is capable of measuring at least a couple of inches of water depth before the water flow dries up.

      • Hi Neil,
        Thanks for your reply! This sensor is submerged deep in a pool. After I saw that it had a negative reading, I cleaned the outside of the probe, put it back in the water, and took another reading and same thing, negative numbers. Some I’m not sure what to try.