Summer / Autumn 2017 Prototype Deployment

[TerryJC]

All,

As mentioned in viewtopic.php?f=11&t=42&p=495#p495, the system is now working reasonably well, so I think the time has come to 'Set to Work'. Here is what has been done:

1. The software is working as described in the link above.
2. The sumppi installation is mounted and has sufficient connectivity to make installation easy.
3. The buttspi (was riverpi) installation is mounted on a new, smaller, baseboard, which in turn is mounted on a thin 'carrier' (made by Clive) designed to fit inside the IP65 wall box.
4. The wall box is mounted behind the Wendy house (by Clive).

What needs to be done:

1. Minor routing of cabling inside the wall box. Some of this I will do before I bring it down to the WMT, but the rest is best done in situ.
2. Extension of the cable on the end of the Float Switch because it is about 30 cm or so too short. (I measured the distance to the bottom of the wall box from the two butts' standpipes. They are 1 m and 1.2 m. The wall box is 1.5 m from the butts base board.)
3. Final integration.

So when do we want to do it? The WMT is going to be busy this weekend, but we could start early or towards the end of the day.

Who's available to get involved?

[hamishmb]

I'm available this weekend and on Monday. Later in the day might be better?

[TerryJC]

Hamish,

I've done the preliminary routing, but I've got to locate some suitable wire to extend the Float Switch cable. We could just do a temporary tacking into place, but I'd prefer to put a new piece of cable on if possible. The trouble is that I only have pretty heavy cable available at the moment.

I agree that later in the day might be preferable, although we'd have to be prepared to be thrown out when Nick, or whoever is on duty, wants to lock the gates!

Can I suggest that we meet up today at around 4:30 to do preliminary work and if we manage to get it all running; all well and good. I'm not sure I'd be too happy about leaving it running unsupervised though, so we may want to come back tomorrow sometime and monitor what is going on.

[hamishmb]

Turns out I'm busy this afternoon, and the model town closes at 5 so probably not productive

[TerryJC]

Turns out I'm busy this afternoon, and the model town closes at 5 so probably not productive

The WMT closes at 5, but the duty manager is there until around 6 (depending on who he is). I've often carried out work after 5 pm; sometimes you just need quality time without all those pesky visitors

Can you make tomorrow afternoon? As mentioned, we can get there early instead, but we won't be able to do much out in the area by the sump once the visitors arrive.

[hamishmb]

Sure. Monday might also be a good idea

[hamishmb]

Terry,

It occurred to me that it's bank holiday weekend, and it'd be nice for me to have a proper rest: I've done lots of stuff for WMT and the youth cafe this week, and I'm still recovering from being ill, so maybe I should take it easy.

How about I see you on Tuesday instead? You can always go ahead with tomorrow without me if you really want to

Hamish

[TerryJC]

Hamish,

That's OK. I'll probably go in for an hour or two over the next few days, to re-instate the measurements, but I won't connect the pump until you are around on Tuesday.

Have a good weekend!

[TerryJC]

All,

I went in at around 4:15 today and completed the installation of buttspi behind the Wendy House. There are one or two minor things left to do, (I am waiting for a cable gland for the bottom of the box for example), and looking forward, we will have to work out how to get the D-Type through the box wall or waterproof it outside. Even so, we should be good to go on the Butts end of things.

I had intended to connect up sumppi and leave it monitoring levels, but there was no water in the sump and the pump was off. Nick said that he had come in this morning and the river was empty with 'the bog garden dry as a bone'. He put the hose in and spent three hours filling the system. The sump was full at 1 pm.

Penri,

Nick says that you visited today and you did some things, including I believe, turning of the pump. Have you any idea what is going on? It seems to me that if we were simply building up a head of water in the bog garden when the pump was on and then throwing it down the overflow when the pump was off or turned down, then the water would only go down as far as the top of the overflow. When I went in this afternoon, the pump was dry. Do you think there is a leak, or is the bog garden taking a lot more water than we think?

I can go in tomorrow AM or PM if it is worth getting the system running, otherwise I'll see you all on Tuesday morning.

[TerryJC]

Update:

This morning was not successful. The Real Time Clock was wrong again (it had lost 2 hrs since Sunday) and I can't figure that one out. I've ordered a new RTC from ModMyPi so that I can test it at home. If it works, then we know that the spare for the Minster Bells System is faulty. If it doesn't, then there is something wrong with the configuration. If we end up with one too many, I'll hang on to it for my own projects.

So this morning, apart from the clock, the software didn't seem to want to connect and we left it running at around 11:15. This evening Penri and I went in and it had connected, but the readings from the Resistance Proble were stuck at 700 mm regardless of the depth of water and the float switch was showing False permanently. See the two files attached.

I had intended to connect the Monitor and Keyboard to both Pis and see if I could see what was going on, but when I disconnected the USB Adaptor from buttspi to allow me to connect the keyboard, it rebooted! With the other issues, particularly the Resistance Probe results, we decided to put things on hold until I could get a couple of USB Hubs to connect permanently to the two Pis, to allow the connection of a keyboard (and mouse if desired) without disconnecting the Ethernet. In the event, I already have one of these USB Hub / Ethernet Adaptors:

Adaptor.png (4.25 KiB) Viewed 1370 times

so, I've ordered one other and that will then replace the blue Ethernet Adaptors (which I can use for laptops etc).

I'll keep you posted.