[Matt Barney]

Thank you, Sara, for the additional tips for working around this PIO issue. I haven’t gotten a response yet on their github issues page, so need to post it on their community forum for others who are experiencing the same issue.

Matt

[Matt Barney]

The online shop is awesome news for those of us building stations in quantity! Thank you Shannon and SWRC!

Matt

Trout Unlimited

[Matt Barney]

Thanks @armas. I have filed an issue with PlatformIO and am awaiting a response. -Matt

[Matt Barney]

Update: This looks to me like a PIO issue. Reverting to earlier versions of PlatformIO IDE, it works; i.e., it downloads all ModularSensors’ dependencies as expected, and my project compiles successfully. This is using a ‘minimal’ platformio.ini file that looks like this:

[env:mayfly] platform = atmelavr board = mayfly framework = arduino lib_deps = EnviroDIY_ModularSensors lib_ldf_mode = deep+ lib_ignore = RTCZero build_flags = -DSDI12_EXTERNAL_PCINT

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

[env:mayfly] platform = atmelavr board = mayfly framework = arduino lib_deps = EnviroDIY_ModularSensors lib_ldf_mode = deep+ lib_ignore = RTCZero build_flags =     -DSDI12_EXTERNAL_PCINT

…And my only source code is the default template main.cpp that is populated when doing a PIO -> New Project.

At the moment, I’ve reverted to PlatformIO IDE v1.10.0 as follows: In VSCode’s Extensions pane, click the Settings ‘gear’, select Install Another Version.

-Matt

[Matt Barney]

Yes, that works for sure; I had to do so last week just to get a couple of Mayfly loggers built and shipped out to the field. Now I’m revisiting the issue in order to get my dev environment back in order.

[Matt Barney]

Hi Beth,

Thank you for sharing your experiences! I’ve tried those things too, and I’ve definitely had them work for me in the past. I thought I had gotten pretty good at smacking PIO around and getting it to behave, but today is apparently not that day…I’ve repeatedly restarted VSCode, created brand new projects, as well as cleaning out the .pio folder, and even reinstalling PIO and VSCode several times. Something appears to be impeding PIO from traversing all of its dependencies on this machine. I just tried it on another box that has an older version of VSCode, and it worked properly there.

Best,
Matt

[Matt Barney]

Thanks for sharing this good work, Neil. This does get technical, and I have a lot to learn, but your experiences will be helpful. For the short term, our team is primarily interested in knowing approximately what the limits are, for a given site, for a given set of sensors, whether the available solar power will keep our stations running for the site-specific constraints. Larger panels and batteries are a potentially cheap solution, relative to my R&D time, though Issue#23 describes the existing limitations of the Mayfly circuit’s charging current, which I was not aware of until just now. We’ll have the option (usually) to reduce sampling frequency to save power. Another avenue for power savings might be to implement 2 Loggers: one that logs frequently to the SD card, and one that runs less frequently to transmit via cellular, which can be a high drain, as I understand it. Just thinking out loud.

-Matt

[Matt Barney]

Interesting, thanks Jim. I’ve been wondering whether one of our problem stations has a charge controller chip that’s impeding its charging, so we’re preparing to swap out the Mayfly to troubleshoot.

-Matt

[Matt Barney]

It looks like this power sensor from Adafruit could work: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4226

This sensor, with accompanying library from Adafruit, returns milliamps, millivolts, and milliwatts via I2C, so seems promising.

This is new territory for me, so if anyone has insights or advice, I’m happy to hear it!

Matt

[Matt Barney]

Hi all,

Glad to hear about others using radio modules to relay Mayfly data to in internet connection. And Anthony, it’s great to hear about the mDot modules potentially being incorporated in ModularSensors. That’s something that we at Trout Unlimited will definitely be interested in exploring in the coming months. I could possibly contribute some time to that effort if needed, so contact me directly if that’s of interest. We are also considering (and have a volunteer who is currently working to implement) XBee 900 MHz radios. Can you tell me what the tradeoffs are between that and LoRa (or point me to some resources)? I really haven’t gotten started exploring yet, so would appreciate any guidance/experience.

Best,
Matt

 

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