James P

See attached, a picture is worth a 1000 words. This one has the 4400mAh battery. Installed the new micro sd card yesterday.

Turns out, it was the micro sd cards. We had two units with Sandisk Ultra 32gb cards, and two with different cards. One was a Sandisk “industrial” 8gb card, I forget the other one but it was an older 4gb card. The Sandisk 32gb cards use far more power — there is some info online but I don’t fully understand it. What I know is the Sandisk…[Read more]

I have a multimeter that can measure amperage. I’m not sure how to get it inline with the circuit though without putting together a couple wires with the proper jst connectors…I’m not an expert in this and don’t want to short the board.
Any suggestions on where on the board or how to test?
Thanks!
James

Thanks for all your help. I believe that the bigger solar panel with >1A peak current, a 1A charging current to the board (jump SJ15), and a freshly charged battery should remedy the winter issues.

Regarding consumption, I took one unit home, mostly charged a LiPo 3300mAh battery, here is what I found (no external sensor connected, transmitted…[Read more]

I’ve had a 5v 2.0A usb charger plugged in for 3.5 hrs. The yellow charging light is still on. I think it should take ~2.5 hours to fully charge a 4400mAh battery with a 2.0A charger, so it should be done.

Does someone know if the board is getting any feedback from the battery on whether it’s accepting a charge or not? If there is not feedback…[Read more]

Thanks! So the yellow light was on because solar was charging, that’s good news. I assume that light is powered by the sun and not the battery.

Our next step will be to replace the battery if the full overnight charge doesn’t work. I’ll set those two DIP switches to off after I try to fully charge the battery.

Yesterday I attached a powerbank to the usb-c port for a little over two hours. Two yellow lights were on, one near the usb-c port and one lower down. I also installed a 10w solar panel. When I detached the powerbank, the yellow light near the usb-c port turned off but the other one stayed on. The station held voltage for two hours after that,…[Read more]

I don’t believe any lights are on during the 15 minutes between data transfers. In the summer and fall lights would start blinking every 15 minutes, then stop for 15 minutes, etc. I’m not sure if there was something happening during the 15 minute break. Once I get the battery charged up with a powerbank i’ll check the dip switches.

Crazy, today…[Read more]

Thanks for the data, Our site has much more exposure to sun than in a redwood forest, and  is doing something similar:
https://monitormywatershed.org/sites/SpokaneR-SpokaneValley/

Note the times on the website are accurate but when you look at the data the times are not accurate — sun isn’t up at 5am. I wonder why the clock reset..
The last…[Read more]

Hi thanks for responding. I’m sure our system is undersized for our location. Today was a pure sunny day, last week we installed an extension pole and cable so the solar is up plenty high to get direct sun. But today we got no readings sent via cellular.

Our battery is a LiPO 4400mAH 3.7V.

The solar panel is a 1W 6V
Open Circuit Voltage:…[Read more]

We have the standard Mayfly kit from TU…the sun here  in the winter is apparently never strong enough to charge the battery with the default solar panel and battery. The voltage reading may get to above 4V for a short time (maybe 1 hr per day), but quickly drops and no more data is transmitted. I dont know if the voltage i see is coming from…[Read more]

Thanks very much!

We’re seeing that. Ours are mainly shorter blips down:

https://monitormywatershed.org/sites/LittleSpokane/