The Estate’s conservation buggy is very useful when we have a pile of awkward items to carry.
This is the 2016 node in its protective laser-cut “inner” box. You can see our new processor board with on-board radio and the optional lighter green CC1120 radio board on top of the MountainSensing v2 pcb which handles power and /I/O.
On the mountain we could run Ed’s new code to sniff the 6LowPAN radio traffic and plot it – this gave us a much easier way to see what had linked up:
Ed Crampin’s plot of 6LowPAN packets on the mountain near router2
This map made by Arthur’s new code shows the connectivity by asking each node for its route table.
The team in 2016 outside Loch Insh – minus Arthur who flew back for his graduation!
We managed to update the processors so we have more RAM/Flash while keeping the same sensors deployed in 2015. Sebastian’s solar powered lithium battery packs were installed in many nodes too!
The team have been very busy making new PCBs for the final deployment in two weeks! The MS2 boards were even helped along by ECS’s new pick-and-place machine – but incredibly the Munjtac processor boards were all hand-built!
in 2016 we are testing small solar panels to charge the batteries until the snow covers them. I have just sealed them using a silicone rubber:
they also get a good MIL-spec-connector and new cable.
Our “muntjac” processor/radio board is now being tested on the original ms1 interface board. It uses a CC2538 and CC1200 as its radio and has flash storage for readings. Here you can see it sitting on top of the board – which is possible as it has the same connections as the z1.
our muntjac processor board on our ms1 board
The Muntjac is very much a shortcut for us to use an ARM core – we don’t actually use the 2.4GHz radio for example.
compare this to the Battery voltage over the same period
Two days in June 2016 showing how the lead acid battery voltage changes during the day
Router2 – which links our network over the mountains to the peat research zone had fallen over in high winds. Olivia and Emma successfully repaired it on a cold day in November:
Emma Bryder – PhD student in Dundee – helping to fix router2.
Winter was setting in and soon travel up to the sites will be very difficult. A replacement box/node/battery linked up the peat zone into the network once this was installed. Data which had been stored on peat nodes started to flow back to the server every hour (as expected) via four network hops!
In September Arthur and Kirk went to reprogram the nodes with bug fixes.
Arthur reprogramming a peat node. Not the best weather that day!
We had reduced the RAM usage of the code and removed some bugs. It also allowed us to recover readings from “lost” nodes and recharge the batteries.
Once again we had the use of the conservation buggy – to carry equipment up and down. The luggage section is useful for this activity!
Phil, Kirk, Jane, Sebastian, Olivia, Arthur