Project Curacao2 – Part 11: It Lives! Deployment and Initial Results

We have now deployed all three parts of Project Curacao2 on the island and Dr. John has reluctantly returned to SwitchDoc Labs.   The system is working and reporting data and pictures back over 3500 miles.   We have a few pictures of the installation process and some initial results to report.

 

Project Curacao2 is a redesign and rebuild of the Project Curacao environmental monitoring system that was running down on the island nation of Curacao in 2014 and 2015.   It finally died after a loose wire in the solar panel assembly (not in the panels, but in the internal wiring) finally came completely loose.   We are taking the original project curaçao apart to diagnose it.   More on that in a future posting.   We are now using a LoRa WXLink wireless transmitters for data collection.

The project consists of two LoRa transmitters based on a Mini Pro LP and a Raspberry Pi Zero powered base unit.   Lots and lots of sensors!   All solar powered.

• Part 1 - Introduction to Project Curacao2 and the LoRa WXLink Feeder Stations
• Part 2 - First LoRa WXLink Feeder Stations Report
• Part 3 - Testing the LoRa Range
• Part 4 – Initial LoRa Range Results
• Part 5 – Final LoRa Range Results
• Part 6 - Raspberry Pi Zero Base Unit Build
• Part 7 - Flame On!   Initial Base Unit Tests
• Part 8 - Solar Power Management System
• Part 9 - Ready for Deployment and Status 
• Part 10 - PC2 in the Caribbean!  Repairs and Testing
• Part 11 - It Lives! Deployment and Initial Results
• Part 12 - One Month of Results from Paradise

Installation

Project Curacao2 has three parts.   Two WXLink LoRa based weather reporting units (using the WeatherRack for Wind Direction, Speed and Rainfall and the AM2315 I2C sensor for Temperature and Humidity) are put up on two of the radio towers in the area (currently on two local towers, one WXLink LoRa unit will be moved to the Ridge tower later in the year).

WXLink LoRa Install

The picture to the left is the installation of the first WXLink LoRa unit.   Yes, we used climbing harnesses and climbing clips.  Safety first!

Both of the LoRa units went up easily.   We did learn we should have preconfigured and prepositioned the installation wire ties before climbing.   Doing that up the tower was slow, hot work in the tropical sun.   Dr. Shovic’s trademark Fedora hat flew off his head and sailed all the way out of the compound, but not into the ocean, luckily.

 

Raspberry Pi Base Unit with Yagi Antenna Install

We first took down the Project Curacao unit installed three years ago.  We took that into the Radio lab and analyzed why it failed (more in a later post, but basically the Arduino BatteryWatchDog LiPo batteries failed and the power monitoring unit stopped running.   We put in new batteries  from Project Curacao2 and it came right back up!   Interesting results.).

We found we could reuse the Project Curacao PVC wall mount so the installation went smoothly.   After looking at the mounting angles and direction, we determined that we would hit minimum power on June 21st and then power would increase until December 21st and then start to decrease.   On most sunny days, even on June 21st, we should be able to operate for 24 hours a day and then the power will gradually get better as the Sun moves south.   20 – 20 hindsight says we should have mounted a solar panel flat on top of the box for the low power months.    We will fix that on our next trip.   We will replace the LiPo batteries too on that trip.

 

Last Minute Upgrade on the Base Raspberry Pi Project Curacao2 Solar Power System

Those who have been discussing topics in our forum (forum.switchdoc.com) know that SwitchDoc Labs is about to launch a new Kickstarter for our new Solar Power Controller, SunControl.   We are working with the engineering prototypes and are about to complete testing.   We took one of the two prototypes down to the Caribbean with the thought if everything goes well with the install, we could swap out the existing SunAirPlus controller with the new SunControl unit for a good solid in system test. We made the decision to take the chance, as the SwitchDoc Labs testing had gone so well, to install the new SunControl board into the Project Curacao Raspberry Pi base unit.   We were a little nervous, but hey, what a great test!   It took about an hour to perform the surgery and it worked amazingly well right off the bat.  We got charge rates up to 1500mA from the solar panels, compared to about 1200mA max on SunAirPlus.   The output power was rock solid and everything looked good so we closed the box and mounted the base unit.

Initial Results

While we still need to do some calibration on temperature and wind, we are getting good results already from the other instruments (including the camera) and especially from the solar power system monitoring units.  The camera needs to be rotated slightly (which we will do in software since we are 3500 miles away now) and we have quite a bit of software improvements to do to improve the power efficiency of the unit.

Here is a graph showing 10 days of operation of the solar power system on the base unit.   Note:  This isn’t the first 10 days of operation alone.  Only the last three days that we haven’t been fooling with it.   We also record the solar power system data from the two WXLink LoRa units, but we haven’t built a graph for it yet.

 

 

[section]Finally a picture from the Project Curacao2 PiCamera showing some action on the ocean.  Looks like fun!