Blog

Laser scanning

Someone came up with the random idea that we could test the new laser scanner just before tear-down by having it scan the entire array.  It probably would be best to take multiple views, but it appears that the clump of trees just across the channel NE of S6 could have stable ground and a view of everything related to the project (all 15 stations, the wind turbine, and even most of the tower).  This would be a semi-circle scan at reasonably low* elevation angle, out to about 1km (except the tower, which is 1.13km).  (*60m at 1.13km is an elevation angle of only 3 degrees.)  When we next go out in good visibility, I'll check it out.

 

s5 TRH fan issue

About 1630, s5 TRH fan was being turned off.  We upped the fan threshold current level from 80 to 150ma and now the fan is going (reading ~110ma).  T and RH have been reading fine all the time, though who knows how good the signal is with no aspiration.  We'll have to visit this site, with the idea of replacing this fan (and will have to reset the current threshold back at that time).

P.S. It died soon after we did this, getting above 150 as well.  So, I've just reset to 80mA and we have it on the list to be replaced.

P.P.S. Note that with low overcast skies, the radiation error will be small anyway, so these data still can be used.

P.P.P.S. Now that it has been several hours since the rain ended, I tried a reset (^R) again.  This time, the fan is back at about 38mA and stayed up.  Also, I didn't see much of a change (if any) in temperature after it restarted.  So...we might say that it was just the rain and now works, but I'm still suspicious.

 

 

EC150 probably wet

As of about 1500 today, the EC150 h2o and co2 channels have stopped reporting.  No doubt they are offscale with lots of water on the lenses.  Hopefully, both will come back when the rain stops.

P.S. Now that the rain has stopped for a while, both signals are back, though both higher than they should be – likely still with water on them.  We'll look again in the morning.

 

 

Radiometer "cleaning"

We used radiometer cleaning as our excuse to go boating this morning and thus visited s15, s9, and s1 (in that order).  However, nearly continuous rain during these visits meant that a) the up-looking surfaces were wet immediately after being wiped b) totally overcast sky won't be good for measuring any effect of cleaning c) rain was already doing a pretty good job of cleaning without human intervention.  I did not need to use any water from the squeeze bottle.

As part of this process, Steve S has been releveling the sensor in "roll".  At s9 and s1 I also adjusted the legs to attempt a leveling in "pitch".

s15: ended 10:04 (local)

s9: ended 10:33 (local)

s1: didn't record – approximately 11:00

P.S. From the data, call the times:

s15: 0959-1003

s9: 1028-1033

s1: 1047-1053

P.S. The wetness sensor at s15 was completely out of the water (though the tide was coming up), though it had a few weeds adjacent to it and clearly had some mud splatters on it.  I pulled most of the weeds, but left the mud (arguing that it would just get muddy again soon)

Daily Status 9/19

9/19/16

Summary: Rain started as soon as we got to the trailer 8:30

                  Off and on all day; nevertheless did a boat tour to 15, 9, 1
                  All stations look good this morning, until the rain started

Actions past 24 hours:

  • Yesterday (9/18) was a "dead day" (day off)
  • Shift change: Andy arrived Thurs, Gary left Sat, today is Steve O's first day, Steve S. leaves tomorrow

To dos:

  • Reshoot boom angles (just because...)

Sensor Status: 

  • Lost everything from s9 for 10min overnight in the UDP data; I'll check if the raw_data are okay
  • CHECKED: rsync data are fine.

T/RH:  ok
P: ok; Pirga still lower by about 1mb
2D Gill: ok
csat u,v:  ok
csat ldiag: ok
csat w, tc: ok
EC150: ok
motes: ok
Wetness: ok
radiation: ok
Tsoil: ok
Gsoil: ok
Qsoil: ok
Cvsoil: still need to have John/Steve S come up with a fix (in Boulder)

Rainr: isn't being covared, doesn't show tips in cockpit, even though it is raining.  Hmmm.

    CHECKED: archive shows tips from sensor (1.67" so far!); not being covared yet (but will).  

    cockpit issue was just that RAINR_RANGE wasn't defined and defaulted to +/-10, but one tip = 183mm/hr.  Changed.
Vbatt: ok

Daily Status - 9/18/16

9/18/16

Summary: Sunny, light winds out of the SSW
                  All stations look good this morning.

Actions past 24 hours:

  •  Gave Terry a tour of the sites

To dos:

Sensor Status: 

T/RH:  ok
P: ok
2D Gill: ok
csat u,v:  ok
csat ldiag: ok
csat w, tc: ok
EC150: ok
motes: ok
Wetness: ok
radiation: ok
Tsoil: ok
Gsoil: ok
Qsoil: ok
Cvsoil: not responding
Vbatt: ok

Daily Status - 9/17/16

9/17/16

Summary: Mostly sunny with very light winds out of the SW
                  All stations look good this morning 

Actions past 24 hours:

  •  Replace TRH probe at site 13
  • measured NR01 height and fixed Tsoil at site 9
  • Gary did some more work on data issues

To dos:

  • Take Terry on a boat ride to the Marsh

Sensor Status: 

T/RH:  ok
P: ok
2D Gill: ok
csat u,v:  ok
csat ldiag: ok
csat w, tc: ok
EC150: ok
motes: ok
Wetness: ok
radiation: ok
Tsoil: ok
Gsoil: ok
Qsoil: ok
Cvsoil: not responding
Vbatt: ok

cell modem interference

It has been pretty obvious from the plots that the sonic diagnostic flag is worse during the time periods when the data are being "rsync"d back to Boulder.  This is only for the CSAT3, not the CSAT3A/EC150.  When I plot the high-rate data, I even find data gaps – 12s for one period I looked at.  Even during non-rsync times, there are continuous non-zero ldiag values.  These should be pretty close to zero all the time.

I suspect that the CSAT3s are picking up RF interference from the cell phones.  If it hasn't been done already, we should play with grounding the heads and boxes (after checking to see if the mechanical connections already do this).  Andy knows the drill all too well.

If this persists, it isn't a huge problem, since bad samples should be rejected by software, but it would be nice to fix if we can.

 

We left about 10:30 this morning to go into the Marsh. We had to go the long way but that was good since it
 was Andy's first trip. We visited 2 sites. Site 13 to replace a bad TRH probe and site 9 to measure the
height of the NR01 and to replace the Tsoil PIC. Due to some complications (see below) we went out again
in the afternoon. 

Results:
Site 13 - The TRH probe appears fine. The problem was the SHT75 transducer. There was a fair amount of
                corrosion on the transducer.  TRH61 was replaced with TRH11.

Site 9 -   The height of the NR01 is 166 cm. We were going to replace the Tsoil PIC but I had forgotten to change
               its calibration coefficients to match the probe in the ground. So we decided to go back to the base to have
               lunch then deal with the PIC.
               After lunch I discovered that the original PIC, #04, had its coefficients all set to zero. This explains why the
              response from the sensor was -0.01 for all temperature levels. I was able to restore the coefficients. Andy
              and I then went back out to install TS04 PIC board. Everything worked as expected. It is a mystery to me about
              the coefficients getting set to all zeros.

 

Daily Status 9/16/16

9/16/16

Summary: Partly cloudy with light winds out of the NE.
                  TRH down at site 13. Tower data from Emerald channels down (refer to blog post for details) 

Actions past 24 hours:

  •  Tower Emerald down last night, Gary got it going this morning

To dos:

  • visit site 13 for TRH issue
  • visit site 9 to measure radiometer height and replace Tsoil PIC

Sensor Status: 

T/RH:  ok, except for site 13
P: ok
2D Gill: ok
csat u,v:  ok
csat ldiag: ok
csat w, tc: ok
EC150: ok
motes: ok
Wetness: ok
radiation: ok
Tsoil: ok, bad at mote #1 (site 9)
Gsoil: ok
Qsoil: ok
Cvsoil: not responding
Vbatt: ok

Last night Steve O. caught that the tower DSM had stopped writing to the USB disk because it had filled up.  I turned on --remove-source-files in the rsyncs from barolo, so that has cleaned off the disk and should prevent it from filling up again.  The rsync script leaves the most recent 7 days of data files on the local disk.

In restarting the DSM process last night, the emerald card did not come back, and so we lost winds and TRH above 10m from around 2016-09-16 23:30 to 2016-09-17 13:30 UTC.  This issue with the emerald cards is being tracked in a JIRA issue: ISFS-127.  I got things working again this morning by rebooting the dsm.

 

Daily Status - 9/15/16

9/15/16

Summary: Cloudy with winds between 5 and 10 m/s out of the NE.
                  TRH down at site 13. Sensor is responding but bad data from transducer. 

Actions past 24 hours:

  •  Installed Mote #1 and rad/soil sensors at site 9
  •  cleaned all radiometers

To dos:

  • depending on weather, visit site 13 for TRH issue

Sensor Status: 

T/RH:  ok, except for site 13. Sensor went down arounf 20:30 yesterday
P: ok
2D Gill: ok
csat u,v:  ok
csat ldiag: ok
csat w, tc: ok
EC150: ok
motes: ok
Wetness: ok
radiation: ok
Tsoil: ok, bad at mote #1 (site 9)
Gsoil: ok
Qsoil: ok
Cvsoil: not responding
Vbatt: ok

Marsh visit today

Gary and I went to the Marsh today to move Mote #1 from site 15 to site 9. At 15 the TP01 PIC board
was removed since the sensor is not working correctly. It will be taken back to Boulder for  for repairs.
The NR01 domes were cleaned.
At site 9 the cleaned NR01 along with the soil probes were installed. The mote was connected to port 7.
At the site the tsoil was not coming in. The PIC board may be bad so Andy will bring out a few spares.
We also went to site 1 to clean the NR01 domes.

Gary will make the necessary mods to the config for port 7 at site 9.

Soil sensors at 9
HFT - 103638
Qsoil - 14
Tsoil - 4

 

 

 

Daily Status - 9/14/16

9/14/16

Summary: Light winds,  < 5 m/s, out of the WSW, clear,
                 Worked on new DSM to test questionable GILL 2D cable. To verify
                 DSM was setup correctly built a test cable for the GILL. Test cable
                 verified DSM was setup correctly so 2D cable is bad. Will take back to Boulder            

Actions past 24 hours:

  •  Base work, no boating yesterday
  • build test cable to check GILL 2D and DSM settings

To dos:

  •  move Mote #1 and NR01 to site 9
  • add soil probes to Mote #1

Sensor Status: 

T/RH:  ok
P: ok
2D Gill: ok
csat u,v:  ok
csat ldiag: ok
csat w, tc: ok
EC150: ok
motes: ok, mote #1 does not have soil probes
Wetness: ok
radiation: ok
Tsoil: ok
Gsoil: ok
Qsoil: ok
Cvsoil: not responding
Vbatt: ok

webplots are back up

Just put more error-checking in vertex.tilt.plot().  Not sure why it was necessary...

Also note my <new> format, with 2 summary plots at the top.  These will break with a webplots_redo, but I'll deal with that some time in the future.