Reply To: MMW Data Outage?

There was a major worldwide outage with Hologram yesterday that is still being resolved. You can read more about the details here on their status page: https://status.hologram.io/

So it’s not a MonitorMyWatershed outage, it has only affected EnvidoDIY stations with 2G modems, because none of our stations with 4G modems were affected. T-Mobile is the only provider for 2G right now, and they are planning to decommission their 2G network at the end of 2020, so we have been making plans to upgrade all of our existing stations from 2G to 4G by the end of the year. This 2G outage gives us a glimpse of what it would look like in January when all the 2G stations will drop offline. Upgrading from 2G to 4G involves visiting each station, reprogramming the Mayfly, and replacing the modem and antenna, and adding a LTEbee adapter. So it requires about $100 worth of hardware and visiting each station, of which we have about 40, so it’s a time-consuming process but will be necessary to keep everything online.

So any stations currently offline right now are likely using 2G hardware, and Hologram says things should be returning to normal soon. The owners of these stations should start to consider upgrading their hardware before the end of the year in order to prevent the permanent 2G outage that is inevitable. And if your 2G station doesn’t come back online in the next few days after everything returns to normal, you might visit it and check the battery. Sometimes cell outages stress the battery by causing excessive connection times every 5 minutes, which can drain the battery faster, especially in areas that are shaded by the full leaf canopy this time of year.