Shannon Hicks

Can you share the model number and manufacturer of the rain gage, or attach a picture of it that shows the tipping mechanism?

It sounds like things aren’t connected to the Mayfly board properly.  The 3.7v Lipo battery gets connected to only one of the JST jacks labeled LIPO BATT on the Mayfly board, then a 6v solar panel gets connected to only one of the jacks labeled either SOLAR1 or SOLAR2, and not both.  Are you using one of the old style glossy 3.5w panels, or one o…[Read more]

The very bottom-left corner of the schematic for board v1.1 mentions the two charge rates, which you can control using solder jumper SJ15.  Here’s the description of that jumper from the Jumper Settings page:

SJ15:  Lipo battery charge rate:  500mA (default) or 1A.  This jumper allows you to select the maximum charger output current of the onb…[Read more]

If your sample/transmission rate is set to 15 minutes and you were getting that poor of a battery life out of your stations, then they definitely aren’t going into sleep mode, so I’d suggest investigating the code that’s running on the Mayfly to learn more about its behavior.

James, your station seems to be using power at a rate much higher than a usual CTD station.  Our Mayfly v1.1 boards with EnviroDIY sim7080 LTE board and a CTD sensor will see a decrease in the battery voltage overnight of 0.045v during a 12 hour period with absolutely no sunlight, and transmitting the data to the portal every 5 minutes.  Your s…[Read more]

What version of Mayfly board do you have?  And what brand of cellular board?  There are a lot of combinations of hardware on EnviroDIY stations, and some are much more efficient than others.  Also, do you have a spare Lipo battery that you can fully charge separately in your office and then put it into the station?  If your logger is only wor…[Read more]

Have you had any luck getting it to work?  If not, have you tried opening the Arduino Serial Monitor to see what the Mayfly prints to your computer when the Mayfly starts up and after each attempted sensor reading?  You can also email your sketch to me at mayfly@envirodiy.edu if you’d like me to take a look at it to see if it’s possibly a code issue.

It’s been a while since we’ve used Xbee modules with our Mayfly boards, so I don’t remember all the tricks to configuring the routers and coordinators, but your Mayfly code looks correct to me.  Have you tried removing the wake and sleep commands and just leave the Xbee module constantly powered to see if that helps?  Are you using the Mayfly v…[Read more]

If you’re talking about the external solar panels that we ship with the EnviroDIY Monitoring Station Kit, they are made by Voltaic Systems, and they offer a variety of extension cables for placing the panel further from the logger.  The connector is a basic 3.5×1.1 mm barrel jack, but it has a unique waterproof design that is better for outdoor…[Read more]

Sensor readings of -9999 mean the Mayfly logger isn’t receiving valid data from the CTD sensor.  If this is a brand new sensor, then it’s probably because the sensor SDI-12 channel number is set to the default channel of 0 (zero) and the Mayfly needs the sensor to be something other than that (because for Meter Group sensors, channel 0 means the…[Read more]

It depends on what you mean by communicate.  Are you wanting to transmit data wirelessly between a Mayfly and another Arduino-compatible device?  Or are you meaning a direct cable connection between the two devices?  Either way is possible, but it really depends on a lot of factors, like what sort of data are you transferring, how often, and wh…[Read more]

If you’re using an external FTDI or CP2102 interface board to program your Mayfly via the Mayfly’s FTDI socket, then the Mayfly dipswitch labeled USB should be turned off before connecting the external interface to the Mayfly, and it should stay off the entire time.

What version of the Arduino IDE are you using?  From your screenshot, it looks…[Read more]

You are correct, if you’re using the USB jack to power a v1.0 or v1.1 Mayfly using a 12v source, then there’s no way to interface the Mayfly with a PC for programming or viewing serial output.  However, all Mayfly boards include an FTDI jack that allows you to connect a variety of FTDI cables or adapters in order to communicate with the board in…[Read more]

It’s still in the prototype and testing phase, but the good news is the the chips that were unavailable for the past 18 months are finally available again.  If you or anyone else have specific RS485 sensors that you’re hoping to use, it would be helpful if you email me at mayfly@envirodiy.org with your sensor model information so we can make sure…[Read more]

The only differences between the v1.1 revA and revB are this:

The ICSP jack was a 2×3, 0.5″ pitch male pin header on Mayfly v1.1 revA.
The ICSP jack is now uses Tag-Connect pads for use with Pogo pins for ICSP programming for the Mayfly v1.1 revB.

And with the revA boards, there was a circuit design change after manufacturing that required me to…[Read more]

If you’ve got 4 heated sensors that require constant 12 volts, then I don’t think the Mayfly and the standard “battery/solar panel combo” is going to be sufficient.  It would be a struggle for the Mayfly to supply the necessary continuous 100ma at 12v for the heaters, in addition to powering the various sensors intermittently.  You could have a s…[Read more]

Sensors with heaters are another big challenge, especially if they run continuously.  Are the heaters powered all the time, or only when taking a sample?   Do they require 12v to operate, or was that spec just listing the power draw at 12v?

You can do some basic battery life calculations on this handy website: https://oregonembedded.com/batterycalc.htm

Standard practice is that when the Mayfly board goes to sleep in between measurements, it turns off all power supplied to the sensors and radio module.  So the power consumed when sleeping is just the bare minimum to keep the Mayfly in sleep mode, which is usually a little less than 1 milliamp.  There are ways to make it use even less in sleep m…[Read more]

It appears that the Hologram service interruption has been fixed and almost all of the cellular stations on Monitor My Watershed have returned to normal operation.  If any stations don’t rejoin the network by later today, it might require a field visit to cycle the power or possibly replace the battery.