Shannon Hicks

You say you use these solar panels to power other microcontrollers. Is this a bare solar panel that outputs 6v in full sunlight and 0v in the dark, or is it one of those solarpanel/battery combo things that has a built-in battery so it always outputs a constant even in the dark?

The solar panel shouldn’t be connected to the USB port. Solar panels should only be connected to the JST jack labeled “SOLAR”. The LiPo charger circuitry on the Mayfly will use the solar panel voltage to charge the battery.

If you connect a USB cable to the USB jack, then the charging circuitry will use that voltage, and yes, the battery will…[Read more]

The Mayfly boards are back in stock. The Starter Kit inventory is getting low, but more of those are on the way to Amazon and will be in stock next week.

A large number of boards were purchased earlier today and that depleted the inventory. There are still a few starter kits available. I will be shipping more boards and kits to Amazon later this week, and will post here when they are available for purchase again.

Sure, if the manual says it’s okay to ground the sensor’s negative signal wire, then you can just connect the sensor’s ground and negative signal wires to a “GROUND” pin on the Mayfly, and then connect the sensor’s positive signal wire to one of the Mayfly’s auxiliary analog pins. The easiest way to do this is with one of these…[Read more]

The Apogee SP-110 will work fine with the Mayfly. Just connect the signal wires to AA0 and AA1 (the aux analog inputs) and do a differential measurement. You’ll need to use the Adafruit_ADS1x15 library and look at the example for differential measurements.

We always use the amplified output versions of Apogee’s solar sensors instead of the…[Read more]

SJ-12 is for enabling the pullup resistor on D10. SJ-1 is for changing the square wave alarm signal from the RealTimeClock from A7 (default) to D10. As stated on the Jumper Settings page (https://envirodiy.org/mayfly/hardware/jumper-settings/), you should never use SJ-12 if you’ve also changed SJ-1 to D10. The two can’t be used together or it…[Read more]

We use sensors from a variety of companies, and most times every sensor on our stations will come from a different company. This is because we like to mix and match the sensors for the exact needs of the location and research questions being answered. What parameters are you interested in measuring?

I have used several solar radiation sensors with my Mayfly boards, so it’s possible, however it really depends on what the excitation voltage of the sensor is, and what the analog signal’s output voltage is. Can you tell me the make and model of the sensor, or at least what are the power requirements and output voltage?

The temperature compensation sensor for the Maxbotix sensor doesn’t interact with the Mayfly at all. It’s connected directly to the ultrasonic sensor’s pin #1, so the Mayfly doesn’t need to know anything about it. All the Mayfly does is capture the serial data that comes from the sensor’s data pin.

I’ll be away from my desk most of the day…[Read more]

The Mayfly boards and starter kits are fully stocked on Amazon, as well as the protoshield and a new listing for the Grove-to-3.5mmStereo adapter board we use for connecting Decagon Devices sensors to the Mayfly: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0725Y7B4B

The SIM808 module on the FONA must be powered directly from a 3.7v LiPo battery because it draws around 500mA during data operation, and can have occasional draw of up to 2 amps during a TX burst. The SIM808 module also requires a power source of 4.0v nominal, with a minimum of 3.4v and a max of 4.4v. So powering it directly from a 3.7v Lipo is…[Read more]

You don’t have to post the actual sketch here since it likely contains the unique URLs, registration tokens, and UUIDs that we’ve developed for transmitting the data to the online database portal. We can contact you directly through email to get the code and can then take a look at it to see what’s causing the instability. I have some ideas…[Read more]

Mayfly boards have been back in stock on Amazon since earlier this week. The starter kits should be available on Amazon next week.

What logging sketch was your Mayfly running? Was this a sketch that you wrote yourself, or is it one we provided to you with the board?

Depending on the browser you’re using, your save options might be worded differently in the drop down box when you right-click on a link. You could also just go directly to the library.zip file page: https://github.com/EnviroDIY/Libraries/blob/master/libraries.zip
and then click the gray “Download” button on the lower-right side of the page.…[Read more]

Because the v0.5 board can now accept an input supply voltage up to 12v, I had to change the onboard voltage divider that’s used for measuring the battery voltage by way of A6. So the formula for reading the battery voltage on a v0.3 or v0.4 board is this:

rawBattery = analogRead(A6);
sensorValue_battery = (3.3 / 1023.) * 1.47 * rawBattery;

But…[Read more]