Weather: getting chilly, temps about 50, breezy, occasional short snow pellet showers

People: Tony and William left today, Gary and Antonio leave tomorrow, leaving Chris and Steve for "burn in".  Still a bunch of PIs and students, all scheduled to leave Sat.  The Aspen people are gone.

Misc. stuff today:

  • I worked on the snow pillows (with the help of one of Jessica's sons).  I set the SPI IDs to the pillow numbers, with p1 nearest the uw tower, p2 directly in front of c, p3 between c and ue, and p4 close to d.  Found that p1's electronics is responding to commands, but not reporting data (though the pillow load cells are okay).  Jessica will follow up with the manufacturer.
  • Antonio did a yeoman's job of climbing to diagnose and then completely redo the power cabling to cm, cu, and ct, since cu and ct weren't responding (also no wifi).  We suspect a weak FET on cm's AUX port (similar to what we had found with testing of ue), which dropped the 12+V voltage to ~4V under the load of powering cu and ct, with their sensors.  Now cm, cu, and ct are powered with individual cables straight to the Victron power box (monitored by cl).  cb and cl are powered by the Victron monitored by cb.  (a bit confusing!)
  • Chris spun off to help Ethan figure out a scheme for mounting and powering the lidars.  At present, two of Ethan's Raspberry Pis are housed inside the ue DSM and running.
  • Gary set up the ISS webcam at about 5m on d with a view of our other towers, and the base of Mt. Gothic.  Its local IP address is 192.168.1.80.  We all immediately wanted to see the view!

I also need to list changes to the config:

  • The FlowCapt sensors are now mounted on ue, rather than c.  Gary has configured these to run (two USB devices on one DSM).  Data are flowing (now even to qctables).
  • To avoid clutter, Jessica decided to remove the Tsnows from ue.   She may decide to use these sensors for a manual snow temperature survey when the snowpack develops.  (Requiring us to provide a Bulgin-to-D9+power cable for her.)
  • Jessica would still like to have a humidity measurement – preferably fast response – close to the snowpack.  This is why we had a 1.5m EC150 in the configuration for c, which would use the EC100 housing the "extra" nanobarometer.  However, neither of us has a clue as to how this would be mounted on c, given the amount of clutter already on this tower.  We decided to defer any action until the snowpack develops.  I have removed this from the config for now, though I may connect up a data cable.
  • Jessica and I also discussed the snow pressure measurements.  She will still use at least some of the nanos mounted on c, but plans to install them into the snowpack, rather than have the pack grow around them, since she is concerned that the inlets would freeze closed if left out for extended periods.  We agreed that ISFS would just leave a bundle of tubing attached to the nano inlets for the moment.
  • Of course, the CSAT3BH has not yet been delivered and is not even configured.  I have left a boom for it at uw.2m, though I expect this to be moved up to uw.3m when we install it.
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