Bird Conservancy of the Rockies is starting to create a few troubleshooting guides of common issues (wifi connectivity, power issues, antenna alignment, etc.) to help with station maintenance. But before we get too far, I wanted to officially reach out to the community to see if anyone had already done something similar. While a few issues are universal, several are not and are dependent on how and where the station was constructed, but anything helps. We install things differently in the windy Great Plains than someone on the Coast who has to deal with salt water!
Overall our goal is to provide Site Hosts with a troubleshooting guide to common problems to help bolster the integrity of stations that are out in the landscape but are a bit too far for us to easily access ourselves. We also want to start recording the solutions to these problems so that others don’t have to rediscover the wheel.
Hi Kylie! Nice project!
Please check out the Sensorgnome V2 User Guide before you get going, I have tried to put all the docs in there so they’re in one place. There are some troubleshooting sections there and I’d be happy to add more or someone else to add more. (I’ve also eliminated some troubleshooting pieces by making the software deal with it or surfacing an obvious error…)
Hello Kylie
I recently created a document for one of our remote sites that an untrained ‘site host’
was willing to visit for us. Much of it is specific to our CTT receiver at the site
which is solar powered and cellular only. Hopefully it may give you some ideas.
The main things I’d like to point out…
I called it a ‘Level 1’ trouble shooting document. It is intended for someone
who is not trained and prepared to dive deeply into troubleshooting with a laptop,
reflashing the Rpi etc. Its more towards - "We havent heard from this station for
months and want to know if its there? Is it alive, is it talking to the radios,
or is it frozen up. Does it need to be retrieved and brought back to the lab? etc
I havent yet written a ‘Level 2’ document yet.
I think its really beneficial that anyone headed out to troubleshoot be encouraged to
make the minimum observations in steps 1-7 before trying anything like a reboot. Otherwise
your likely to have no clues as to why things went bad in the first place.
The doc is on my shared google drive at:
I would be happy to help with your effort or review your content etc.
-Rich