[Shannon Hicks]

I have confirmed that removing capacitor C4 will let the board continue to run without resetting when you open the serial monitor window. HOWEVER — This only works if you’re using the FTDI connector on the Mayfly (and a separate FTDI interface device like the Adafruit “FTDI Friend”) to connect it to your computer.

If you want to have this feature when connecting the Mayfly directly to your computer via the Mayfly’s microUSB port and a standard microUSB cable, then you need to remove capacitor C14 instead of C4. Or you could remove both caps and then the Mayfly will never reset on either type of connection.

[Shannon Hicks]

The protoboards are now available on Amazon, via the URL I posted above. The Mayfly boards and the protoboards are selling fast, but we have a really big order of boards and accessories being assembled right now, so I hope to have the Amazon storefront fully stocked soon.

[Shannon Hicks]

The protoboards went to Amazon almost 2 weeks ago, even ahead of the Mayfly boards, which got restocked online yesterday, so I think the protoboards should be available very soon, possibly today. Amazon used to get our inventory online very quickly last year, but lately they have been taking over a week or two to get products available after receiving them.

The protoboard listing can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5NP42G

[Shannon Hicks]

Amazon shuffles the products between warehouses sometimes, and they list the items as “backordered” while they are in transit and unavailable for immediate purchase. They will show up as “available” when they’ve reached their new warehouse. Normally this kind of stuff isn’t apparent if there’s sufficient stock of the items, but it’ll show up at times like this when there are only 2 of the starter kits left.

Protoshields have been shipped to Amazon and should appear online maybe this weekend. I’ll try to get some more boards and kits to Amazon, but I’ve been out of the office most of the past month with travel and field work, since this is the prime season for deploying dataloggers and stream sensors.

[Shannon Hicks]

Unfortunately the way Amazon does our item fulfillment, their system won’t allow backorders, and they only take orders when the item is in stock and physically in their warehouse. Sometimes they are very quick to get the item online and available, but other times it takes them up to two weeks to make our items available after I’ve shipped them.

The good news is that a few more starter kits are currently back in stock right now, and I just received more boards from the manufacturer yesterday. I will be trying to get them packaged and back to Amazon as soon as possible.

We’re also hoping to get the accessories like the proto-shield in stock next week too.

[Shannon Hicks]

That’s an interesting idea, I can try it with one of my testing boards later this week and let you know what happens (unless you’re good at removing (and replacing) SMD capacitors if it doesn’t work.)

[Shannon Hicks]

Another option for connecting a sensor’s 3.5mm stereo headphone plug is to use these stereo jacks:
https://www.amazon.com/uxcell-Stereo-Female-Adapter-Connector/dp/B013D1U90S
Just strip the black, red, and white wires of a Grove cable and solder them to the corresponding terminals of the jack.

And the easiest way to do it is to use our custom Grove-to-3.5mmStereoJack adapter board:
http://envirodiy.org/wp-content/uploads/grove_stereo.jpg
We hope to have these in our Amazon store later in April.

[Shannon Hicks]

The boards are $60. They were in stock last week, but sold out very quickly. We are working to get more inventory soon.

[Shannon Hicks]

The Xbee socket is powered from the main regulator, which can source 500ma. If your radio was having trouble drawing current, you’d probably see strange behaviour on the rest of the board. Are you powering anything power-hungry at the same time as the radio? What kind of antennas are you using? Xbee units have a default power setting of “high”, have you changed that or are you using the default configuration? Have you tried monitoring the current while the radio is transmitting?

For what it’s worth, I have used lots of Xbee and Xbee-Pro modules, both 2.4Ghz and 900Mhz, and there are a lot of different factors that influence the signal range. What kind of range are you currently getting and at what frequency?

[Shannon Hicks]

Here are some links to photos of the boards.

Version 0.3:
http://envirodiy.org/wp-content/uploads/20170319_022350.jpg

Version 0.4:
http://envirodiy.org/wp-content/uploads/20170319_022329.jpg

Version 0.5:
http://envirodiy.org/wp-content/uploads/20170319_022228.jpg

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