Pollinator Pollster, Part 8: Summary and Conclusion

RE: Pollinator Pollster, Part 8: Summary and Conclusion

soldering.on — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 16:11:55 GMT

Update 18/07/23: The sensor has been deployed for 3 weeks now, and it has been fun to see what data has been collected. Good weather over the weekend resulted in nearly 4 days of continuous operation and data collection, albeit with a brief pause when storms on Sunday actually blew it over, and the panel ended face-down in the grass, resulting in a drained battery by that afternoon. We are back to overcast weather now so it has not been in operation since yesterday afternoon. I am pleased that it has survived the weather conditions, as the thing has had a hard time with rain recently!

RE: Pollinator Pollster, Part 8: Summary and Conclusion

soldering.on — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 11:54:18 GMT

Update 12/07/23: Weather-wise in my part of England we've had every type of weather possible in the past few days, but happily this has included some sun, so as you'll see from the project website (link in the blog into above), the sensor was able to come back to life and collect data yesterday and today too. I'm sure the bees also appreciate a break in the rain and lots of pollinator activity is going on in the garden, which the sensor seem to be picking up.

RE: Pollinator Pollster, Part 8: Summary and Conclusion

soldering.on — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 20:25:36 GMT

Update 09/07/23: A sunny day on Friday brought the sensor back to life and also a flurry of bee activity in the garden, which the sensor captured. Sadly you'll see the data from the 7th is still preserved on the website as no fresh data has come in since then - thunderstorms and full cloud cover both yesterday and today has put a stop to things again temporarily. The forecast for the week is mixed, so we'll see what happens. If I am to do a v2 of this project, I will increase the size of the battery (or perhaps use two 18650 cells in parallel) in order to let it endure more days in a row of bad weather.

RE: Pollinator Pollster, Part 8: Summary and Conclusion

soldering.on — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 14:09:06 GMT

Update 04/07/23: After a brief burst of sunshine on the 2nd, it has been back to overcast and rainy weather here so the sensor is offline again. The systemd scripts on the Raspberry Pi which automate the changing of the charts on the website home page will keep the last recorded 12hr plot (from the 2nd) there until fresh data is received and the 12hr cycles can continue. Some sun is forecast for the end of the week so hopefully we will be back to live data again soon.

RE: Pollinator Pollster, Part 8: Summary and Conclusion

soldering.on — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 18:02:22 GMT

Update 01/07/23: The sensor is presently offline - after weeks of heatwave the weather in my part of England has been incredibly overcast and rainy for the last few days, and the sensor only has the ability to run under battery power alone for ~36 hours and therefore ran out of power this morning. Sun is forecast though so hopefully we will see it back online tomorrow!

RE: Pollinator Pollster, Part 8: Summary and Conclusion

DAB — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 17:59:30 GMT

Very good finish.

Great project.

RE: Pollinator Pollster, Part 8: Summary and Conclusion

soldering.on — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 16:37:41 GMT

PS if you're keeping an eye on the website, the flask server is set to not cache browser images, hence you should see updated graphs when you refresh the page (the graph is refreshed at 5 minute intervals) but if you don't you may need to do a hard refresh of your browser page while viewing the site, in Firefox this is Ctrl-Shift-R for example.