Reply To: InSitu RDO PRO-X not reading

I successfully used that sensor with a Mayfly v0.5 board with no problem.  If you’re powering the sensor with a separate 12v battery, do the Mayfly and the 12v battery share a common ground? 

I successfully used that sensor with a Mayfly v0.5 board with no problem.  If you’re powering the sensor with a separate 12v battery, do the Mayfly and the 12v battery share a common ground?  The white wire from the sensor is the SDI-12 data line, which should go to pin 7 , as you stated in Line 93.  It’s fine to use a separate battery to provide the 12v power to the sensor (red wire), but you need to make sure the Ground pin of the Mayfly is connected to that external battery, and the ground line of the sensor (black) is connected to the external battery as well.  I assume you used the sensor’s two RS485 wires (green & blue) to connect to some sort of modbus-to-PC adapter so you could use their software to change the SDI-12 channel number?  For future reference, you can use the Mayfly to change that channel number using the example “b_address_change” sketch included in our SDI-12 library.  Once you’ve deployed your sensor and don’t need to access the RS485 wires anymore, make sure you cover the bare ends of the green and blue wire and don’t let them touch anything on the Mayfly board or other pins in your logger enclosure.

I would also suggest removing line 172, because it’s going to reprogram the RTC time every time the board is turned on or restarted to whatever time you’re written in line 34.  If you’ve got a CR1220 coin cell battery in the Mayfly’s battery holder, there’s no reason to set the clock more than once.  It’s best to set the clock in a sketch all by itself, then verify that it’s synchronized, then upload any other sketch you want and the clock will keep the correct time for several years, until either the CR1220 dies or is removed.

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