[Shannon Hicks]

We’re planning to implement a separate online storefront for bulk quantities for instances like this, which will make purchasing large quantities much easier than buying lots of our single-packaged units from Amazon. Not sure of the exact date we’ll start, but hopefully very soon. In the meantime, if you just need estimates on when a certain number of boards or other EnviroDIY items are available, email me at mayfly@envirodiy.org and we can tell you the exact state of our inventory.

[Shannon Hicks]

They were in stock and available for a few weeks, but I guess they’re popular again. We’ve been offering the protoshield for several years, but demand for these tends to fluctuate more than any of the other things we offer, so it’s difficult to predict.

A tip for finding our items on Amazon: only in-stock items can be found using the Amazon search bar. If an item is out of stock, Amazon will remove the listing from their search results and you’ll never find it by searching. However, you can always find the listing by clicking on the static URL for each item. For example, all of the Amazon listing are linked on the Mayfly’s main page and the accessory page: https://www.envirodiy.org/mayfly/hardware/accessories/

You can also use a search engine like Google to find any of our items on Amazon, even if they’re not currently in stock.

[Shannon Hicks]

It sounds like the sensor isn’t getting power. Do you know which sensor wire you had plugged into the Vcc jack on the screw terminal board? Do you have a voltmeter (multimeter) that you could put on the Vcc line to measure the output voltage of the Mayfly’s 5v switch boost circuitry when the sensor is supposed to be powered for a sample? It’s likely that connecting the sensor wires to the wrong terminals damaged the circuit on the Mayfly board that generates the 5-volt power, or the sensor itself might have been damaged.

[Shannon Hicks]

Pressing the rest button only makes the logger code restart, the same as if you turned the power switch off and then back on, so it shouldn’t cause the sensor to stop working. Did the sensor stop reporting normal values exactly when you restarted the board? Did you accidently bump the sensor connector inside your enclosure and cause a bad connection to become loose? I’m assuming you’re using the Grove stereo jack adapter board, or maybe a screw terminal board if you bought a sensor with bare wires. Does your station have a cellular board to send live data to a website, or is it recording on the memory card only?

[Shannon Hicks]

The yellow LED on the Mayfly board indicates when the battery is actively being charged. If the battery is fully charged, then the yellow LED will be off. What does the data card file say the battery voltage was when you experienced the issue of the yellow LED not being lit? The Red and Green LEDs near the battery jack are programmed to blink rapidly back and forth 5 times when you first boot up the board (or if you press the reset button), assuming you’re running one of our MondularSensors example sketches. Once the logger is running, the Green LED will only come on when the logger is awake an taking a sample. There’s a second Red LED down in the far corner of the Mayfly board near the Grove connectors, and it comes on when the sensors are being powered during a sample. When the logger is asleep, you won’t see any Red or Green LEDs, and the yellow LED will only be lit if the battery is lower than 4.15v and the sun is out. If there’s not sufficient sun to charge the battery, or if the battery is already charged, then the Yellow LED will be out, this indicates that the charge regulator circuit is functioning correctly to keep from over-charging the battery once it’s full. So checking your datafile to see what battery voltage was recorded is important for determining if your charger is working properly.

[Shannon Hicks]

Is the small jumper on the Mayfly board next to the Aux Analog grove ports switched over to 5v from it’s default 3v position? Did you verify that all of the sensor wires are connected to the right ports on the 6-pin screw terminal board? Red wire to Vcc, White wire to D2, Blue wire to D1, and the other three wires (black, green, and clear) all go to GND? And that the grove cable is connected to the AA0-AA1 port on the Mayfly? Do you see the red LED3 come on next to the Aux Analog ports when you’re taking a sample?

You can also post a photo of the Mayfly board and the sensor wiring on the screw terminal board if you can take a nice, focused photo.

[Shannon Hicks]

That is an interesting part, but I agree that the most dangerous thing about using it is the possibility of having the metal part of the holder (which is connected to the negative or ground side of the board power rail) contacting something inside the Mayfly case and shorting things out.

We’re planning to offer a 5-pack of just the vertical card adapters for sale very shortly, so we’ll post more about that when it’s available.

[Shannon Hicks]

I sent more protoshields to Amazon earlier this week, so they should be available as soon as Amazon processes the incoming shipment.

[Shannon Hicks]

Remote programming a datalogger has never been a priority for the type of deployments we usually do, because our monitoring stations require frequent maintenance visits to clean the sensors or perform other tasks at the station. The most common reason for reprogramming a board would be if you’re adding or removing a sensor, or recalibrating one, and for all of those tasks, you’re going to be there onsite with a laptop, so there’s no sense in adding expensive or complicated hardware for remote reprogramming. Also, our loggers are basically one-way portals, they take a reading, send it, then sleep until it’s time for the next reading. If you want to be able to remotely connect to the board, you’ll have to wait until it’s awake and connected to the network, which is only for a few short moments before it goes back to sleep. Or you can change how (and for how long) the board connects to a network to make it available for remote connections, but that will require excessive battery power, which is already a precious commodity in some stations with lots of sensors and limited sunshine.

[Shannon Hicks]

I don’t know of anyone successfully programming a Mayfly board remotely. We didn’t design the board with that capability in mind, but we’re investigating that option for future board versions.

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