[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Matt, I’m glad you found the update helpful! I would be interested in connecting with you to more of your perspectives and long-term needs, if that’s of interest to you.

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Thanks Robert, Cal, Jim and others for this thread, and to @shicks for providing all those updates on the Hologram situation.

I would like to add that our team overseeing the Monitor My Watershed portal has also noticed some issues on our end, which are separate from the Hologram issues, and we are working on improving MMW services.

Many of these issues have been apparent since the COVID-19 work-at-home orders were put in place. Since then, we’ve noticed intermittent 502 & 504 gate errors responses from our server (either when browsing via the web or when posting data from a monitoring device) and we’ve noticed a general slowness when browsing the portal.

One of the issues is that since COVID-19, the web servers at LimnoTech that host MMW are getting a lot more internet traffic as LimnoTech staff use our VPN to work from home and for other reasons.  To that end, LimnoTech done a number of upgrades to LimnoTech’s network that resulted in several planned 1-2 hour outages from time to time. Although we’ve seen some improvements, this hasn’t solved all the issues. We’re continuing to work on optimizing our network.

The other issue is that Monitor My Watershed is running on an aging software stack, which could probably benefit from a not-so-trivial round of updates.

The Stroud Water Research Center and LimnoTech are committed to long-term maintenance and development of the Monitor My Watershed data sharing portal. We have developed a roadmap for the next phase of development, and are presently exploring funding options to get started. If you have any leads for potential funding, please contact us! Every drop counts!

Our development roadmap includes hosting MMW on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for enterprise-class up-time. It also includes addressing various “tech-debt” items that naturally accrue as a software system ages, along with many other items that we’ve listed in our Release 0.12 – Tech Debt / Refactor Code milestone on GitHub.

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Brian, you can use that DS18 temperature sensor on any of the digital pins (labeled on the Mayfly as: D4, D5, D6, D7, D10, D11), and because it’s OneWire, you can connect many DS18 sensors to a single pin using the I2C Hub (which generically connects multiple Grove connections in parallel). It just won’t work using I2C protocols.

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Hey Matt and Neil, we’ve had a bunch of server-side issues in the last few days, so I’m guessing that’s more the problem than anything on your device. Part of the issue was a 5.5 hour internet outage to our servers caused by a Comcast fiber-optic line issue on March 31 in the afternoon. But we’ve had other issues that we’re trying to track down.

If this happens to you again, please run a traceroute or tracert command from your computer and send us the results (maybe in an email to me). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceroute

I’m connecting this to the related issue on GitHub: https://github.com/ODM2/ODM2DataSharingPortal/issues/477

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Hi Evan, I worked with Bobby Schulz to develop the https://github.com/EnviroDIY/Trigger library to un-inhibit an ISCO water sampler when turbidity was measured above a certain value. https://github.com/EnviroDIY/Trigger/tree/master/hardware/ISCO-Mayfly-Trigger

The Trigger library is quite generic, as it will send a pulse or change the polarity on a Mayfly pin based on any measured value crossing any threshold. It can thus be used to control an external device, such as a latching switch (which maintains it’s state even when the Mayfly goes into low power sleep). See https://github.com/EnviroDIY/Trigger/tree/master/hardware

To use with the EnviroDIY Modular Sensors library, you must “unpack” the dataLogger.logDataAndPublish(); function in the loop, as is shown at the bottom of the menu_a_la_carte.ino example (which is commented out by default): https://github.com/EnviroDIY/ModularSensors/blob/master/examples/menu_a_la_carte/menu_a_la_carte.ino

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Hi @Evan, thanks for the heads up that Sparkling plots and Time Series Analyst are not connecting to the database. The data are safe, it’s just a connection issue for the visualization tools. You can follow our progress on the Hot Fix here: https://github.com/ODM2/ODM2DataSharingPortal/issues/473

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Jim (@w3asa), I think the tutorial @fisherba mentioned back in Aug. 2018 is this one: https://envirodiy.github.io/LearnEnviroDIY/

We last updated it in April 2019 with our v0.2 release: https://github.com/EnviroDIY/LearnEnviroDIY/releases

So it is written for ModularSensors v0.21.2.

Otherwise, it is “complete” (but there is always room for improvement).

I’ll probably be updating it in the next month or two. Keep an eye on the releases.

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Following up on Beth’s comment on enclosure, the radio signal should get through the plastic case just fine, but the bigger issue is keeping distance between your antenna and any other metal, especially wires and battery but also including your solar panel. I’m always careful to place my antenna in the top of the box, keeping the wires, battery and Mayfly lower down. I place my solar panel either below my box, or quite a bit above it, so that the antenna has no metal between it and the horizon. Beth and I first saw this issue when we mounted a station behind a guard rail. Lifting the top of the box 6 inches, so that it peaked over the guard rail, made all the difference.

Sara, thanks for your results from different antennas. I’m surprised that the PCB antenna from the GPRSBee worked better than the Taoglas Maximus FXUB66. When I swapped a bunch of those out last year on my GPRSBee stations, I found a huge benefit to using the Maximus. I’m also surprised that the GPRSBee antenna worked at all with LTE, because I thought GPRS & LTE were different frequencies. I had noticed that Sodaq started shipping their GPRSBees with different, larger antennas about a year or two ago, so I’m guessing their new antenna might have been selected to also accommodate LTE frequencies.

It’s true that the Taoglas Maximus FXUB66 is huge and sometimes hard to fit into a box. Based on your results, I’ll definitely start experimenting with other antennas.

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

Hmm. I wonder if it is somehow connected to our last release on Thu. Jan. 23. As Sara mentioned, we didn’t touch the code related to the HTTP post request, but at that time we did make some changes to our virtual machine host OS and our router.

Does it make a difference if you post to monitormywatershed.org, which is now our primary hostname, rather than data.envirodiy.org? I wonder if the rerouting might contribute.

[Anthony Aufdenkampe]

@rachel.murray, that’s great to hear that you were able to get the YosemiTech Y4000 sonde working with our Modbus Mayfly Wing Shield and associated documentation. I developed all of that for a team at Winona State University in Minnesota, but I hadn’t been aware of anyone else trying to integrate the Y4000 with our EnviroDIY stack. So that’s satisfying to hear that you got it working, for a while.

BTW, are you working with my friend Troy Baisden?

I will say that the Y4000 sonde is the one sensor from YosemiTech that has given me headaches to get working and also to keep working. Unfortunately I haven’t kept up with documenting everything.

The first challenge with the Y4000 is that it needs a stable and consistent 12V of power with the capacity for high amperage draw during startup and when the brush is spinning. I was able to barely get it to work on the Mayfly with the Modbus Wing + two 680 uF capacitors, but only when no other sensors were attached. The system was browning out when I attached other sensors, and I’m guessing that if the radio were drawing power while the Y4000 is on that would also brown out the system.

The solution was to wire up an independent 2 Amp 12V power supply that is switched on & off by the Mayfly. While the power for the Y4000 system comes from this separate power supply, the Modbus communication still passes through the Wing Shield. None of this is publicly documented yet, but here are my notes:

Redo Y4000 line, with built-in power regulation and switching

Overview of connections
– Battery to Pololu Power Switch HP to control by Mayfly
– Pololu 12V Voltage Regulator to Sonde

Details
Pololu Big Pushbutton Power Switch with Reverse Voltage Protection, HP,
Battery Side:
– Vin to battery +, This powers the system
– GND to Battery
Sonde side (via regulator)
– Vout to 12V regulator Vin
– GND to 12V regulator GND
Mayfly Control side
– CTRL to Mayfly switched power (Setting D10)
– GND to system/Mayfly ground

Pololu 12V Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator S18V20F12
Battery Side (via switch)
– Vin to switch Vout
– GND to switch GND
Sonde side
– Vout to Sonde red
– GND to Sonde black

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