[Pavel]

Thank you very much for the answer. No, the rain gauge was deployed as it came out of the box. The sensor was leveled during installation, but the pole was not re-leveled since then and it was there for two or three years. I was asking Meter for help and asked them directly if there is some posibility to adjust it and they said “no” so I am bit surprised there might be calibration possible. But i doubt it would help as the spoon gets stuck in lower position where there is no “endstop”. Unfortunately I don’t have the rain gauge here and I can’t check it now. Spiders and so on are not the cause of this as rain gauges were cleaned well and the issue is still there. I was thinking if some hydrophobic treatment on the spoon surface would not help to drain the spoon properly. They told me in Meter to clean tipping point/axis with isopropyl alcohol. If you are also using ECRN-50 or similar product, you might have the same issue, just dont know about it, because your loggers behave better and you just miss some precepitation here and there without noticing.

[Pavel]

It is ECRN-50 by Meter Group. There is “spoon” stuck in lower position in the picture.

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   stuck.png
   

[Pavel]

Where did you get that value, Sara? Can you explain it little bit? Is that somewhere in SDI-12 specification? In spec, there is written that sensor have to wake up from low power standby mode within 100 ms after detecting break. But that is regarding data line and I think says nothing about 12V power supply line.

[Pavel]

Thank you for feedback.

I didn’t think about publishing it on GitHub at first as I felt like there are just two small pieces of Python program and it is all already available in that post. But maybe it is good idea anyway for possible issues reporting and improvements…

I have never used Mayfly logger. When I found out about that project it was impossible to ship it to Europe. I thought I will build it myself and I still have somewhere few Mayfly PCBs, but I just didn’t have time for it in the end. I am not 100% sure, but it seems that Amazon now ships it to Europe so I am thinking about ordering one.

Well, the sensors do not have to respond to 3.3V logic signal, right? Everything between 1 and 3.5 V is undefined state according to SDI-12 spec.

The TekBox converter does not report packets which are out of electrical specification. It just listens to communication and that is it. It might have its issues too, but I haven’t noticed any. It definately helped so far with debugging less reliable SDI-12 devices and it captured  communication from sensors which (problematic) datalogger was not able to catch. It showed that the logger didn’t catch the sensor sesponse to D0! command and instead of repeating D0! command after timeout, it just continued with next sensor.

The most expensive TekBox converter can also automaticaly test sensor if it is made according to SDI-12 protocol. But I think it just tests which commands are supported and their timing. I think it is really cool for sensor development. These converters are unfortunately all really expensive in my opinion.

[Author]

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