Blog from September, 2012

updated todos

Here is my current list -- not <too> long, but some serious:

A3 add barometer (since short one, might steal C20's)

A6 add CSAT (still at CSI?)

A8 barometer not mounted at correct height -- Jielun may do using level or theodolite.

A12 sonic can't acquire signal; head ok, connector ok, power ok, cable ok

A17 sonic can't acquire signal; head ok, connector ok, power ok, cable ok

A19 sonic back in Boulder since loose head

A19 GPS reports GSx messages (Gordon couldn't fix)

M21 3m sonic missing serial cable (Chris is fixing at FLAB?)

Also:

Set-up base computer; data archiving, statsproc, cockpit, WWW plots, etc.

Power, networking, space in base trailer, etc. for Christoph
Labels: 

A19 sonic removed

Since the array is broken, it needs to be returned to CSI.

5m paro okay

I had a broken wire inside the tan box.

3m TRH in place

Installed the last M tower TRH at about 3.1m (due to other stuff on tower).

S/N 3

a18 TRH fixed

Repaired the chewed cable and reinstalled.

sonics fixed themselves

I note that A18 and A19 are now running okay.  A12 is still bad.  A19 of course has a loose head joint, so it needs to be fixed anyway.  At least we don't have to worry about A18??

1m licor running

The licor electronics box was wired to have power through a coax cable (presumably from MFO).  Rewired to get power from Bulgin connector.  Also had to replace fuse (now 2.5A).

DO WE HAVE ANY OTHER SPARE FUSES?  (of the old kind)

soils running

The <fix> was simply to remove references to the QC_files (and expand the limits on Vpile.off) to see the non-nan values.  This change only made on Ars11's scp.xml so far.

todos

Here is my current list -- not <too> long, but some serious:

A3 add barometer (since short one, might steal C20's)

A6 add CSAT (still at CSI?)

A11 all soil sensors (except one TP01) reading nan

A12 sonic can't acquire signal; head ok, connector ok, power ok, cable ok

A17 sonic can't acquire signal; head ok, connector ok, power ok, cable ok

A18 lower TRH cable was chewed.  In trailer for "field repair"

A19 sonic head loose fitting (lower 45-degree); can't acquire signal even when manually realigned. Needs to be returned to Boulder and sent back to CSI.

A19 GPS reports GSx messages (Gordon couldn't fix)

C20 set DSM up on stand

M21 1m licor not reporting

M21 3m TRH mounted at 1m

M21 3m sonic missing serial cable (Chris is fixing at FLAB?)

M21 5m nanobarometer not reporting (had PTB config, but still bad after I fixed this)

Underlined items are what I will try to deal with tomorrow.

Also:

Set-up base computer; data archiving, statsproc, cockpit, WWW plots, etc.

Power, networking, space in base trailer, etc. for Christoph

M21 usbdisk

The Pockettec usbdisk wouldn't come up.  Eventually, I removed it and connected it to "flux" in the dorm.  It didn't mount (though it may have been fine anyway), but I went ahead and used fdisk to rewrite the partition table (that I hadn't changed) and then checked with fsck.  Finally I manually mounted it to "flux" and it was fine.  I replaced it in M21 and it started up without further difficultly.  <Perhaps> it was a connector issue, but I'm not sure.

sensor adjustments

A6 sonic is not installed (waiting for CSI)

A12 sonic (1123) still reporting 8000, even though everything looks fine

A17 sonic (856) same as A12

A19 sonic (672) head was bent (lower 45 degree fitting loose).  Manually resetting did not bring up sonic.

A18 sonic (744) head connector was not seated properly.  Fixed

1133: Rad stand oriented and leveled

~1135-1150: Swapped Soilg and Soilc motes to correct positions.  Didn't install one probe into Soilc left TRH port, since it might have been blown by +12V.

setup day 8

All "A" DSMs up.  C is up as well, just saving data to USB stick.  All sensors up.  Looking pretty good, but still a bunch of small details to fix.

sensor checks

This really isn't readable, but I wanted to document the sensor status that I just did: sonic   trh.0.5m        trh.2m  baro    gps     handar  power
Aph     rs 2    rs 5    rs 6    rs 1    rs G    rs 7    ntpq -p rs 8
Ah      rs 2    rs 1    rs 5            rs G    rs 6            rs 7
Ap      rs 2    "mote_dump n,m"         rs 1    rs G
A       rs 2    "mote_dump n,m"                 rs G    
a1      923     2       9               x       x       -0.014  12.7
a2      833     14      17              x       x       -0.007  12.8
a3      743     24      51                      x       -11.6
a4      1120    x       x               x               -0.005  12.9
a5      732     15      5               x       x       -0.006  12.9
a6              21      16              x       x       -0.005  12.9
a7      673     x       x               x               0       12.8
a8      176     x       x       10      x               0       11.9
a9      1121    x       x       6       x               -0.004  12.7
a10     677     x       x       2       x               0.004   12.6
a11     674     x       x               x               0       13.3
a12     1123    x       x       9       x               0.001   12.5
a13     745     x       x               x               -0.001  12.8
a14     1124    x       x       5       x               -0.005  12.9
a15     1122    x       x               x               -0.001  12.3
a16     740     x       x               x               0.002   12.3
a17             x       x               x               -0.003  12.7
a18                                     x               -0.002  12.8
a19     672     x       x               GSx             -0.002  12.8
c20
m21 (lower)
m22 (upper)
sonic   trh.0.5m        trh.2m  baro    gps     handar  power

Aph     rs 2    rs 5    rs 6    rs 1    rs G    rs 7    ntpq -p rs 8

Ah      rs 2    rs 1    rs 5            rs G    rs 6            rs 7

Ap      rs 2    "mote_dump n,m"         rs 1    rs G

A       rs 2    "mote_dump n,m"                 rs G    

a1      923     2       9               x       x       -0.014  12.7

a2      833     14      17              x       x       -0.007  12.8

a3      743     24      51                      x       -11.6

a4      1120    x       x               x               -0.005  12.9

a5      732     15      5               x       x       -0.006  12.9

a6              21      16              x       x       -0.005  12.9

a7      673     x       x               x               0       12.8

a8      176     x       x       10      x               0       11.9

a9      1121    x       x       6       x               -0.004  12.7

a10     677     x       x       2       x               0.004   12.6

a11     674     x       x               x               0       13.3

a12     1123    x       x       9       x               0.001   12.5

a13     745     x       x               x               -0.001  12.8

a14     1124    x       x       5       x               -0.005  12.9

a15     1122    x       x               x               -0.001  12.3

a16     740     x       x               x               0.002   12.3

a17             x       x               x               -0.003  12.7

a18                                     x               -0.002  12.8

a19     672     x       x               GSx             -0.002  12.8

c20

m21 (lower)

m22 (upper)

Gordon, Sep 20, 9pm

After some hacking, bluetooth networking is working well.

Initially tried the bluetooth access points on a metal pole mounted on the NW corner of the base trailer. All three radios were on the same pole.

BTAP2, serving sites 8-13 was placed highest on the pole, since we felt it had the worst line-of-site view of its stations. BTAP1, serving sites 1-7, and the AP3, the Bluegiga 3241, serving 14-19 were lower.

We were only able to connect to sites 1,8,13,14,15 and 17.

Later found two issues that might have prevented good connections:

  1. a bug (mine) in the blue_check.sh script on the DSMs, where it did not restart the pand process if ping failed
  2. some of the dipole antennas on the radios were not screwed on tightly. I didn't note which stations.

Those 6 sites had pretty good LOS. However other sites which also had good LOS did not come in, which may have been due to the above 2 issues. The dorm buildings were in the way of line-of-site to 5,6,7,9,10,11,12. None of these sites with poor LOS were received.

The WIFI AP24 was also mounted lower on the same pole, and was transmitting, successfully connecting to the ISS-SODAR Etherant EantH.

After lunch, moved the bluetooth radios over to the deck on the back of dorm #2, which has good LOS to all sites. The pole was just bungied to the step railing. AP3 was at the level of the railing, AP1 about a foot above that,
and AP2 about 3 feet above the railing.

Lo-and-behold, only the same connections came in (1,8,13,14,15 and 17), but, initially at least, no others.

Went out to site 4 and discovered the issue with the blue_check.sh script. However, then noticed that several stations started connecting by themselves, despite the bug in the script. So I believe the communications are better from the dorm deck than from the pole on the trailer. To work from the trailer, I believe the radios would have to be raised.

Also at this time noticed that the bluetooth antennas were loose and needed to be screwed on tighter at three sites, but forgot what sites.

The bluetooth connections have stayed up since 5pm this afternoon.

The bluetooth access points are on the pole strapped to the deck stairs. The AP24 WIFI is running, leaning against the deck railing fence. The stations are all sending their data via UDP to the flux laptop (192.168.0.12). The DSMs at main and C are not on.

Here are some connection quality numbers. All bluetooth MAC addresses (aka bdaddr) start with 00:07:80:4f.

For BTAP1 and BTAP2 access points connected to the "flux" laptop (via 2 bluetooth extension cords leading to one powered hub!) I've created a script query_radios.sh, which runs hcitool on the corresponding radio based on its hci device name (hci0 or hci1), querying the radios with rssi, lq (link quality), tp (transmit power) and afh (adaptive frequency hopping).

tp was 19 on all stations (1-13) served by BTAP1 and 2. AFH was typically something like 0xff00f03f00ff03f0ff7f. I believe perhaps that bit of 1 indicates a good channel.

site

bdaddr

RSSI

LQ

1

d4:f1

-7

141

2

d4:ef

-7

209

3

d4:ee

-1

209

4

d4:f7

-2

209

5

d4:d9

-2

209

6

d4:f8

-4

207

7

d4:eb

-2

212

8

d4:e4

-6

210

9

d4:ed

0

212

10

d4:e9

-3

211

11

d4:fb

-6

191

12

d4:e7

-2

211

13

d4:f6

-5

186

To see the RSSI (received signal strength indicator) and BER (bit error rate) on the Bluegiga AP3241, ssh to root@192.168.0.13, and run the inq comand:

site

bdaddr

RSSI

BER

14

d4:fc

-63

0.9

15

d4:f2

-62

0.34

16

d4:f5

-62

0.34

17

d4:f0

-69

0.82

18

d5:00

-67

0.74

19

d4:ff

-76

2.26

Note that RSSI is a relative number, and can't be compared between the two types of access points.

Setup Day 7

On site: Chris, Kurt, Jesse, Steve O. (Gordon showed up at end of day)

All towers now instrumented except:

- 3? A stations that need CSATs brought by Gordon

- 2 TRH + 1 Handar at tower C need to be mounted

- pressure port on (new) A8 is not at the correct height

- Still need to mount radiometers

AC power now goes to both transformers.

Tomorrow we will:

- distribute DSMs

- construct network

- connect systems to AC

- ISS will deploy the SODAR-RASS