BugWeek July 2017 Complete!

July 22, 2017 AM2315, Arduino Software, ESP8266, GroveWeatherPi, OurWeather, Python Raspberry Pi Software, Raspberry Pi, Smart Plant, SmartPlantPI, SwitchDoc Products, Weather, WeatherPiArduino

BugWeek July 2017 Complete!

BugWeek
BugWeek

We just completed BugWeek July 2017.   Unless the bugs are what we call a “Category A – Urgent”, we collect the bugs and then periodically spend all week working on them to get them all squashed.

We like to document what we fixed (and how in most cases) to help educate our customers.   Here is the list of BugWeek July 2017 fixes.

 

OurWeather

OurWeather is a no-solder connected weather station containing 7 different sensors that will teach about electronics, software and the weather.   It contains all the sensors and wires to make a fully functional, WiFi weather station.   No software programming is required, it works right out of the box.

Bugs Fixed:

Version 022 (up as of July 21, 2017):

  • – Wind Speed reports impossible speeds when wind gets > 20MPH in V021
  • – OurWeather V021 is reporting Gust less than current Wind Speed

Source Code:  https://github.com/switchdoclabs/OurWeatherWeatherPlus

 

BugWeekNotes:   These bug fixes required us to duplicate the problem, so we actually built an inexpensive wind tunnel to give us >> 20MPH winds.   It worked quite well in providing a controlled environment to see what was going on.   Here are pictures of the test wind setup.

The problems were two fold.  On GroveWeatherPi (and OurWeather) we had to closely look at the software debouncing times and fix them.   On OurWeather, the ESP8266 processor was stepping on the time counts used to calculate wind speeds and gust speeds.   We fixed that be looking closely at the code and then doing a linear calibration to modify the speeds.

SmartPlantPi

SmartPlantPi is an introductory, easy to build Raspberry Pi based environmental monitoring and plant watering system using advanced sensors to monitor the soil moisture, monitor the sunlight, watch the air quality and monitor temperature and humidity.   It is designed to be easily and simply put together and tested with No Soldering Required.

Bugs Fixed:

Version 015 (up as of July 22, 2017):

  • – UV always reporting zero (Sunlight Sensor)
  • – SmartPlantPi Moisture Detection and Water/OLED Locking
  • – Add updated JSON to SmartPlantPi

Source code:  https://github.com/switchdoclabs/SDL_Pi_SmartPlantPi

Notes:   The UV problem was just a typo.   As many of you know, Python is a weakly typed language, and so a single character typo isn’t flagged as an error by the compiler, it just defines another variable!   The JSON file we just added again.  Looks good.   The Water/OLED Locking problem was the most interesting one to solve.   The SmartPlantPi main program consists of a number of routines that are run at certain times or on events.   In one case, if the plant needed water and it just happens at just the right time, the system would be locked in the state “Sampling” and would never start “Monitoring” the moisture content again.  This also stopped updating the OLED display.   Rock solid now.

GroveWeatherPi

GroveWeatherPi is a Solar Powered Raspberry Pi WiFi connected weather station designed for Makers by SwitchDoc Labs ( www.switchdoc.com). This is a great system to build and tinker with. All of it is modifiable and all source code is included.

Bugs Fixed:

Version 2.95 (up as of July 21, 2017):

  • – Rainfall Rate reporting 0 for last 60 minutes, includes the midnight reset issue
  • – Wind Speed reports impossible speeds when wind gets > 20MPH
  • – Wind Gust Problem

Notes:   Building the wind tunnel really made this problem possible to find.   We examined the interrupt routines and the software bounce times and figured out where the problem is.  You will still get a small amount of jitter (since the Raspberry Pi is a multi-tasking machine) but it should be acceptable now.

 

Raspberry Pi On Going Bug Projects

We have a couple of customers on Raspberry Pis that are seeing higher than normal error rates from reading the AM2315 encased temperature and humidity sensors.   We have started a reliability test now on the Raspberry Pi – we need quite bit of data.

We have not duplicated this problem yet.  Our initial tests showed everything working properly (remember the AM2315 may not respond to “i2cdetect -y 1” and still be perfectly good.  It goes to sleep).

We did a similar project on the ESP8266 and ended up with wonderful reliability numbers.