Tag Archives: WLS

3D printed rain gauge

Posted on 2016/02/08 by andy

Water level monitoring on river basin under observation was completed mid 2015. From rainfall-rainoff modelling perspective rainfall capturing was missing. Low budget, 3d printer at home and some spare time pushed me to design my own rain gauge. Before autumn … Continue reading →

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Outdoor device? Bundle up your PCB.

Posted on 2016/01/17 by andy

Winter is coming… actually it has already come bringing constructor’s nightmare. Sudden freezing cold caused unexpected and massive restarts of all field stations. All because of the same hardware reason. Reason impossible to happen. All that because circuit boards were not … Continue reading →

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EMI shielding

Posted on 2015/09/01 by andy

Close GSM antenna proximity to bare PCB was troublesome latching microSD. Using most resilient flash cards nearly solved the problem. Extra shielding would help to prepare for worst field conditions like area of weakest GSM signal leading to highest emission and … Continue reading →

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GSM antenna freezes microSD

Posted on 2015/07/28 by andy

Dealing with RF is tricky part of electronic design, even though I never had significant issues with GSM in my prototypes. Advancing in WLS project however I discovered a nasty issue with micro SD prone to lock up on interference … Continue reading →

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Water Level Logger – Firmware over-the-air

Posted on 2015/03/10 by andy

Over time firmware stabilizes but rework never entirely completes, either due to inevitable bugs or further enhancements. Manual firmware update applied to couple stations in the field has relatively low effort and is just dauting task. While number of stations … Continue reading →

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Water Level Station – field tests

Posted on 2014/12/29 by andy

Solar panel, probe and main unit is part of my balcony landscape for over a year now. This setup is running from many weeks to several months uninterruptedly depending purely on firmware upgrades. Field tests being final proof are needed though … Continue reading →

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Water Level Station – rain gauge

Posted on 2014/10/16 by andy

Measuring water level is fundamental goal of WLS experiment, hence its code-name (Water Level Station). Early summer 2014 hardware and software system had enough base services to make addition of entry-level pluviometer easy. Prior to PCB redesing for chinese factory I … Continue reading →

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Power cycling slave on I2C bus

Posted on 2014/09/09 by andy

With the advent of 2nd revision of WLS experimental hardware I got nasty system freezes on ported firmware. As they happened always close to power cycling of probe section I suspected new ADC chip using I2C bus. Past experience with I2C … Continue reading →

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PCB from Chinese factory

Posted on 2014/07/08 by andy

Working prototype device made of modular PCBs let me go for the next step. Learning the process of professional PCB production in factory and making short series to scale out number of devices in the field. I had to get … Continue reading →

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Water Level Logger – insufficient RAM

Posted on 2014/05/24 by andy

For prototype I estimated that 128kB or flash would suffice and I was right; firmware took 75kB even though fatten up by embedded strings used across the code for tracing. On the other hand 4kB RAM of Atmega128 turned to … Continue reading →

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