Blog from April, 2015

From 20-22 UTC on 8 April, the wind direction held steady, at all levels, at ~ 340-350 deg.

Recall that the NW booms point to 334 deg and the SE booms point to 154 deg.

This flow condition results in a prolonged and distinct tower wake (or mast effect) on the sonics on the SE boom. Wind speeds at the SE booms during this time period are 4-5 ms-1 slower than those measured on the NW booms!

This is a perfect example of mast effects for our classes!

Status update Tuesday

Sensor status:    

T: ok

RH: ok

Ifan: ok

spd: ok

P: ok

co2/h2o: ok

csat u,v,w: ok

csat ldiag: "ldiag.nw.250m" "ldiag.nw.300m" "ldiag.se.300m" were all flagged from ~3:00 to 8:30 this morning

soils: ok aside from Qsoil

Wetness: ok

Rsw/Rlw/Rpile: ok

Voltages: ok

sstat outputs: ok, ok (uptime of 2 hr 21 min @ bao)

Sensor status: Note: "Qsoil.ehs" is returning bad data; "Tsoil.0.6cm.ehs" from 9:45 to 11:40 is NA

T: ok

RH: ok

Ifan: ok

spd: ok

P: ok

co2/h2o: ok

csat u,v,w: ok

csat ldiag: ok

soils: "Qsoil.ehs" is returning bad data; "Tsoil.0.6cm.ehs" from 9:45 to 11:40 is NA

Wetness: ok

Rsw/Rlw/Rpile: ok

Voltages: ok

sstat outputs: ok, ok

Status update Friday

Sensor status:

T: ok

RH: ok

Ifan: ok

spd: missing spd.5m.bao from 16:40 to 22:30 during moisture event; also, a couple NA's at nw.250m, nw.300m, se.200m

P: ok

co2/h2o: wet but recovered. h2o.5m.bao is a bit lower than it was before the wetness event

csat u,v,w: same as 'spd'

csat ldiag: ok now

soils: Qsoil.ehs has lots of NA data

Wetness: ok

Rsw/Rlw/Rpile: ok

Voltages: ok

sstat outputs: ok, ok

Picklefork revived

I just noticed that 4 days ago, Tsoil.0.6cm.ehs revived itself, after being offscale since almost the beginning of the project!

 

Post-Mortem issues

In prep for a post-mortem on this project, I wanted to start a page of issues that have occurred:

IssueAction TakenFuture Actions
USB sticks died (all? were purple 8G Transcend)Switched to Pocketec, Compact Flash, New stickReplace all sticks with new ones recently purchased
GPS timing oddWidened range of acceptable time lagUpgrade software on all receivers (3.0-3.7 -> 3.9)
200m DSM needed 150m GPS, but it diedChanged to use 250m? GPSNone?
Qsoil reading 0x8000none

Fix

Check connector at tear-down

CSAT3 broken upon installationRepaired at CSI – bad coax cable in head/boxUnknown - new handling procedure?
XBee mote not reliable over 3m distanceChanged to serial mote (tried changing power)Change to all Bluetooth motes?
TRH went to large valueseio power cycle

Unknown

TRH fan controller diedReplacedCheck; see if systematic issue for all
TRH sensor diedNone yet

Improve rain vulnerability?

Lightning issue?

Lost data connection when eol-rt-data changed

eol-rt-data configuration restored

crontab script fixed

SIG checks with Gordon (he tells them when using?)

SIG avoids "snapshots"

Odd Gsoil at ehsnoneDon't install in darkhorse shadow!
EC150 bad data for a weekCleaned bird scatInstall bird diverters?
tsoil.bao mote data intermittentnone; came backUnknown
Mast issues: guy wires; winch; clamp positions; tight nubsVarious in-field adjustmentsSystematically check each component for all masts
AC powering failed (probably loose connections)Changed to solar powerTest this option (needed in future)
Picklefork Tsoil died (then revived!)none (had installed duplicate picklefork)New picklefork design
Picklefork completely died (bao)none

Diagnose

Create new picklefork probe (in process)

EC150 data garbled on ttyS4 at bao, OK on ttyS4 at ehsMoved to Emerald serial port on baoDiagnose. Seems to be a rs422 signal level or termination problem

DSM networking didn't come up after power drop

happened to 150m and 300m

Manually switched off/on

Add battery or ultra cap to main power line?

Identify network interface weakness?

Mote communications failed on bao TsoilEnabled XBee watchdog

Change to Bluetooth

Enable all watchdogs

New whip antenna location? (birds/wind knock down)

New Tirga fan diedReplacedBetter rain protection?
New Tirga has radiation errorInstalled double-shieldMight be acceptable now

 

 

TRH at 300m has been reporting bad T and RH since about 15:20 today (April 1, no fooling):

rs 5
TRH3 166.68 222.66 29 0 5364 983 92\r\n
TRH3 166.68 223.29 28 0 5364 981 88\r\n
TRH3 166.68 223.60 28 0 5364 980 89\r\n
TRH3 166.68 223.60 29 0 5364 980 92\r\n

Power cycled it with

eio 5 0

eio 5 1

which brought it back:

rs 5
...
TRH3 13.55 29.97 30 0 1339 61 94\r\n
TRH3 13.55 29.97 29 0 1339 61 90\r\n
TRH3 13.50 29.97 30 0 1338 61 94\r\n

 

 

Status update Wednesday

Sensor status:

T: ok

RH: ok

Ifan: ok

spd: ok

P: ok

co2/h2o: ok

csat u,v,w: ok

csat ldiag: couple flags

Tsoil: ok

Wetness: ok

Rsw/Rlw/Rpile: ok

Voltages: ok

sstat outputs: ok, ok

100m cannot keep time

The GPS on 100m seems to be acting weird.  It has signal lock, currently slowing 9 or 10 satellites:

rs G
connecting to inet:localhost.localdomain:30002
connected to inet:localhost.localdomain:30002
sent:"/var/tmp/gps_pty0
"
line="OK"
parameters: 4800 none 8 1 "\n" 1 0 prompted=false
$GPRMC,152515,A,4003.0021,N,10500.2309,W,000.0,240.5,010415,008.9,E*68\r\n
$GPGGA,152515,4003.0021,N,10500.2309,W,2,10,1.0,1690.0,M,-18.0,M,,*46\r\n
$GPRMC,152516,A,4003.0021,N,10500.2309,W,000.0,240.5,010415,008.9,E*6B\r\n
$GPGGA,152516,4003.0021,N,10500.2309,W,2,09,1.0,1690.0,M,-18.0,M,,*4D\r\n
$GPRMC,152517,A,4003.0021,N,10500.2309,W,000.0,240.5,010415,008.9,E*6A\r\n
$GPGGA,152517,4003.0021,N,10500.2309,W,2,08,1.9,1690.0,M,-18.0,M,,*44\r\n

 

But its NTP offset has been wandering around.  I added 50m as an NTP server for it, and the GPS clock on 100m is disagreeing with 50m:

ntpq
 ntpq -p
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
*192.168.0.5     .GPS.            1 u   45   64  377    0.946  118.340  33.872
 LOCAL(0)        .LOCL.          10 l   64   64    3    0.000    0.000   0.031
oGPS_NMEA(0)     .GPS.            0 l   15   16  377    0.000  -849.69 347.187

 

On flux, chronyc shows that the clock for 100m is off from the others:

chronyc sources
chronyc sources
210 Number of sources = 6
MS Name/IP address Stratum Poll Reach LastRx Last sample
===============================================================================
^* 50m 1 10 377 321 -125ns[ +15us] +/- 733us
^- 100m 1 6 77 35 +90ms[ +90ms] +/- 1570ms
^+ 150m 1 10 377 535 +6715ns[ +20us] +/- 619us
^+ 200m 1 10 377 476 -4792ns[+9000ns] +/- 831us
^+ 250m 1 10 377 497 +4392ns[ +18us] +/- 857us
^+ 300m 1 10 377 252 +2000ns[+2000ns] +/- 656us

Comparing the output of  "data_dump i 2,10 A" on 100m with that from 50m shows intermittent data gaps of 1.269 seconds, whereas with 50m the two GPS records ($GPRMC, and $GPGGA) are reporting at 1 Hz, with quite consistent delta-Ts close to 0.85 and 0.15.  

I updated /etc/ntp.conf, and changed the time2 parameter from 0.8 to 1.2 seconds:

# time2 time
# Specifies the serial end of line time offset calibration factor,
# in seconds and fraction, with default 0.0.

Now the GPS is agreeing with 50m:

ntpq -p
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
+192.168.0.5     .GPS.            1 u   61   64  377    0.941   -0.204   0.056
 LOCAL(0)        .LOCL.          10 l  42m   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
oGPS_NMEA(0)     .GPS.            0 l    4   16  377    0.000   -0.118   0.031

So it appears that the serial data from the 100m GPS (which provides the time label for the precise pulse-per-second) was late from time to time, resulting in NTP having to struggle to figure out what time it is.  So, for data up to today, I would not rely on the 100m data to have time-tags with any accuracy below 1 second.  D'oh...