Lidar networking 6/30

Went to Marshall today to get the lidar on the instrument network in iss1 via a ubiquiti link.

At the lidar, installed a waterproof box w/ built in plugs that Bill found. When I got the lidar plugged in to the outlet in the box the fans in the lidar didn't turn back on, and after a few minutes I smelled burning and saw some smoke. So I don't think we should be using the outlets in that box. Instead, I added a power strip I found in MISS to the box and plugged the lidar and the ubiquiti POE injector into that. I didn't find any good spots on the neck of the trailer to mount the ubiquiti (the hose clamps they come with for mounting are very small), so mounted it on a separate pole near the neck of the trailer.

At iss1, I mounted the ubiquiti directly below the existing ubiquiti that connects to the Marshall network. I was worried about interference between the two nanobeams based on some info I had found on the internet, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. The lidar link is configured as point-to-point and I set a different SSID, so the lidar link shouldn't be able to connect to the Marshall network.

With the link working I still couldn't connect to the lidar, so I went back to troubleshoot. At one point when I was closing up the waterproof box I had bumped the reset button on the power strip, and I think that tripped something on the computer in the lidar because the lidar didn't come up again after that. The fans were working and the external power light was on, but the head wasn't moving and I couldn't ping or browse to the lidar. With some help from Bill (thanks Bill!) we found that pushing the reset and power buttons on the computer box in the lidar brought it back up. After that I verified that I could ping the lidar from iss1, as well as connect from the lidar laptop (now set up on the instrument network in iss1) and get live data.

As a side note, the UPS in the lidar doesn't seem to be working. Presumably the battery is dead.

Though now as I write this blog post I see that the lidar (and the ubiquiti at the lidar) are no longer reachable. I suspect the power strip tripped again, so I'm heading out to try replacing that with another one.