neilh20

Congrats – nice to see.

I guess the fundamental problem of power management is still there and can bite any time the power drops – and then likely will require a site visit to get the site restarted. Getting enough power is a band aid to enable reporting readings. So long as the power supplied exceeds the power used by a good margin it works. :)…[Read more]

@jamesp  thanks for sharing. Interesting where the “banana skins” are to slip on.

Nice to know its got low quiescent current – end of last year I also  got the same  SanDisk Industrial MLC MicroSD SDHC UHS-I Class 10 SDSDQAF3-008G-I withs its specified Operating Temp Range: -25°C to 85°C , but haven’t measured its current

I’ve bought uSD with…[Read more]

@jamesp I wonder how the systems are faring?

A follow up – I had this running for about 6 weeks last year.

The code is in my fork is at  https://github.com/neilh10/ModularSensors/tree/release1/examples/samd_log_display_mmw  and is available to the main at any time.

For test purposes, I positioned the temperature sensors in my office, attached to different areas round the heating vent, w…[Read more]

I’m very much a fan of ModularSensors and the discussion board as a place to be real with technical issues.   I do so appreciate the unique place EnviroDIY has been curated to be, to try some remote wireless terrestrial monitoring. Its the nitty gritty of environmental monitoring and the engineering it takes.   Its tough to find out what these ser…[Read more]

I haven’t had much luck getting to 0.5mA with mega1284, it was with the Mayfly 0.5b- https://www.envirodiy.org/topic/testing-power-consumption/#post-15252   My notes on measurements is that it was between 2-2.5mA.  I did get well beneath 0.5mA   on another project with mega2560, but that was a lot of hardwork, and also ended up with a higher valu…[Read more]

@jp – the charger relationship doesn’t quite work that way. The 5V 2.0A is typically the stated maximum the charger can supply – however for the battery charger circuit there are limitations. I use a USB Meter to determine what is actually going on.

The Mayfly 1.x charger circuit is to 0.5A as default  but can be changed to 1.0A. I always change…[Read more]

Matt Thanks for posting. I’m away from my computer till next week, so I’ll be interested to look when I get back.
Seems like SpokaneRiver-Peaceful has good solar, and the battery never gets low.

@oakleynode  wow  interesting you are looking at RSSI and it has a lot of variation. I haven’t characterized the RSSI result for a high percentage of failing calls.

Another system that is also on the edge, and I added a new antenna that improved it,  the reading is  -81dBm  https://monitormywatershed.org/sites/TUCA_Mi06/

The modem is a  Digi…[Read more]

@oakleynode something to note is that the MMW/ODM2 packet design with UUIDs make an extra heavy packet. The packet design is not optimally designed for wireless conditions, the thingspeak packets are much lighter. If your site is on the edge of the wireless range,  which varies a lot of with weather conditions, its going to have more trouble with…[Read more]

@shicks surely the issue isn’t how long it lasts – it will always run  out of power at some point, or even worse batteries loose capacity, what was working decays – the issue is how to reliably recover when it has run out of available mA.  ?

The reliable bit – as in all engineering – is to add a buffer for real world component variations and t…[Read more]

@shicks I agree it would be good to see the software. For my systems I look to have it last 14days before it reaches 3.8V and it is a difficult target unless its being tested for and the time taken on the radio is also characterized.

I see the issue is how to keep the sensor readings delivered reliably while there is enough power, and then when…[Read more]

(previous post deleted and restated)    @jp – interesting data. It very much looks like up to early October the solar was delivering enough power for the system.

Then with the seasons solar changing, the solar panel aspect is not delivering the power needed

What I would recommend is a) need to charge up the internal LiIon 4.4Ahr battery

1. …

[Read more]

@jp – interesting data. It very much looks like its the solar panel aspect that is not delivering the power with the seasons changing, and some loss of solar.  a) So anything you can do to help out a better solar aspect  – less shade would help, and  solar panels are best set at an optimal 120 from horizontal for that location (h…[Read more]

Hi @jp – I only install 2.5W or for a shady location I upgrade to 10W.   Can you share the site that is publishing on, and can see how fast the power went down.

The non recharge batteries could work – but you need to do a lot more power calculations to understand how long they will work.  4 batteries (4*1.6V =6V) will work for a boost plugged in…[Read more]

An update – I’ve found I2C bugs in some of the ST3100’s devices – that I couldn’t get a work around. It may be to do with the AVR I2C master. Some other engineers are using it with an STM32 / ARM system that they aren’t seeing the same problem https://github.com/neilh10/STC3100arduino/issues/1

From using the STC3100 -…[Read more]