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Attaching a Campbell Scientific OBS3+ turbidity sensor to Mayfly

Home Forums Mayfly Data Logger Attaching a Campbell Scientific OBS3+ turbidity sensor to Mayfly

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    • #12861
      jsterling
      Participant

        I have successfully deployed two stations with Meter ES-2 sensors. I’m trying to put together a third station with and ES-2 sensor and a Campbell Scientific OBS-3 turbidity sensor, but I can’t figure out how to attach the OBS3+ sensor to the Mayfly board. The manual says to use an “EnviroDIY six-port screw terminal-to-Grove adapter board”, but that part isn’t available on Amazon. Is it possible to just solder the OBS3+ cable to a grove cable connected to the board? Thanks for any advice!

      • #12862
        Shannon Hicks
        Moderator

          We currently don’t sell the screw terminal adapter, but I’m working on getting them to Amazon this week. I’ll post an update here when they are available.

        • #12863
          jsterling
          Participant

            Great, thanks for your quick reply. Is there a way to connect the sensor to the board without the screw terminal adapter?

          • #12864
            fisherba
            Participant

              For each supported sensor in the Modular Library there’s an extensive wiki. I haven’t used that sensor, but the OBS3+ wiki (https://github.com/EnviroDIY/ModularSensors/wiki/Campbell-OBS3) says that it’s an analog communication and here are the wire color details:
              “The power supply is connected to the red wire, low range output comes from the blue wire, high range output comes from the white wire, and the black, green, and silver/unshielded wires should all be connected to ground.”

              So this basically means that the low range goes to one analog pin and the high goes to to another analog pin, such as AA0 and AA1 on the Mayfly. I assume there’s a place in your sketch to define which pin is low and which is high. Then red is voltage and the other three all connect to the ground. You could do this through a Grove port (with a 4-screw terminal), or the analog header rail.

            • #12865
              Shannon Hicks
              Moderator

                The OBS sensor comes a with bare-wire cable with 6 leads. Three of them need to be connected to the Mayfly ground (sensor power ground, sensor signal ground, and sensor shield). Then the 3 other sensor wires get connected to the remaining 3 pins of a Grove terminal (note, you have to use one of the two Aux A/D Grove inputs only). Seeedstudio make a 4-pin screw terminal Grove board, but the hard part is getting all 3 ground wires into one tiny screw terminal, so I designed the custom 6-pin screw terminal board because it has two additional ground terminals. If you didn’t want to use a screw terminal, you could just take a Grove cable, cut it in half, strip the ends, and solder them together, making sure you get the power and two analog signal wires connected to the right wires, and solder all 3 sensor ground wires to the single Grove cable ground wire. But the Grove cables have a very small gage wire in them which is hard to solder properly, and will likely break under frequent flexing unless you properly protect it. And if you do all of this cable soldering outside of the Pelican case, it’s impossible to cram the Grove connector through the cable gland in the bottom of the case.

                So the easiest thing is to just run the 6 bare wires into the bottom of the Pelican case and use the 6-pin screw terminal. If you can wait about a week, they’ll be available in the Amazon store for purchase.

              • #12868
                Shannon Hicks
                Moderator

                  The Grove 6-pin screw terminal adapter board is now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PVKQVH8

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