Mayfly data use very large

Tagged: High data use

This topic has 1 reply, 2 voices, and was last updated 2026-11-13 at 6:27 PM by neilh20.

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- 2026-11-13 at 4:45 PM #20096
  Douglas Wood
  Participant
  Hi,
  
  We have a few Mayfly dataloggers working in some local creeks which are sending data through a cellular network to our own websites. The data are small files, usual CTD data from the HYDROS21 CTD uploaded every 15 minutes. Some of our stations, however, are using over 60MB of data on the cellular system. It is clear, from watching the lights, that the modem only turns on for a few seconds every 15 minutes. Does anyone have any idea why they would seem to be using that much data? I am stumped.
  
  Thank you
  
  Doug (Syracuse U. Earth and Environmental Science) (dawood05@syr.edu)
- 2026-11-13 at 6:27 PM #20097
  neilh20
  Participant
  Hi Doug, do you keep signal strength of the cellular signal and bytes transmitted. What is the size of the files on those systems? and how do you do the transfer?
  
  Assuming you use something like ftp over tcp/ip – then for a faint signal it will try and transfer the whole file – and if it doesn’t work it will try again. Could use a lot of bytes depending on your ftp retry setting.
  
  Typically for transmission system debugging there needs to be some metrics on the mayfly side – eg cellular signal strength, bytes transmitted per session, ftp retrys –
  
  The ModularSensors data structure is a bulky tupl, but small compared with a file. For my low signal strength sites I see that it can fail to complete the tupl transfer, and then it gets a good signal and transfers a bunch. Though i have built in retry reliability to my release. I create a log file on the uSD though it is only accessible when visiting a site
  
  Hope that helps. 🙂
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