Shannon Hicks

Good news – the boards finally arrived a few days ago, I’m now working on getting everything ready for the online sales, details to follow shortly!

We’re still waiting for the first big manufacturing run to get delivered. Once it does, we’ll get it to the distributor as soon as we can. In the meantime, we’ve been working on documentation and instructions, so look for postings that info on this site early next week.

What’s shown in the photo is a basic analog-output pressure transducer made by Keller-America. It’s been awhile since I checked the price on them, and the ones we used were part of a deeply discounted surplus lot. I think they are usually around $300 or higher, depending on the precision and type of output signal.

The board we used in the photos (Seeeduino Stalker 3.2) isn’t available anymore. I have a colleague who was going to post a full writeup tutorial for this ultrasonic logger build, but since no one can replicate it due to the obsolete hardware, it got put on hold. Once the new Mayfly board is available (very, very soon), we can do a tutorial of how to interface it with the ultrasonic sensor. Stay tuned!

What’s the supply voltage (Vcc) of this board? I’m wondering if you designed it for a 5-volt I2C bus like the Uno, or if it’ll work with 3.3v systems, like the Mayfly or Raspberry Pi.

They are being manufactured right now, but we can’t announce availability and online store info until everything is finalized. There was a slight slowdown in the process due to the holiday in China and its effect on the supply chain, but we’re still hoping to have them for sale very shortly.

Here’s an update for everyone wondering about the board availability. We went through one more round of design updates to add some extra features like an onboard FTDI-USB chip and a 5-volt boost regulator to generate 5v for any sensors or devices you want to power. The final Mayfly production run should be ready for purchase at an online retailer in about a month from now (early March). More updates will follow soon.

There are several different ways to trigger an ISCO sampler with an external source.  We’ve found a few ways to do it with our Arduino-based loggers, it shouldn’t be too hard to program a Campbell logger to do the same.  One way is to connect your logger to one of the 3 Programmable I/O pins on the ISCO’s rain gauge connector.  By doing this, you can trigger up to 3 different actions using the logger by simply activating any of the 3 lines using the logger’s control ports.

If you’re already using the RainGauge port, or if you only want one input and aren’t already using the ISCO’s FlowMeter port, you can use one of these cables:

I’ve had loggers out for several very cold winters now, and I haven’t had any issues with the LiPo batteries due to cold temperatures. The only times I’ve had problems was using them in clear enclosures during the summer because the inside of the case turns into a mini-greenhouse and heats up the batteries (and the logger boards), resulting in erratic behavior of the board and occasional swelling of the batteries. But since we switched to opaque enclosures, I haven’t had any problems in the summer heat.