May 11 - May 25 (15 days)

The system is located on the Building B rear deck, for a clear view of the sky. Most of the gear (phone, IOIO, Wakey, batteries) is inside a Pelican case, with the SPOT modem duct-taped to the outside of the case. The case was latched on one side only to prevent cutting the SPOT power and data wires. The pH sensor is currently NOT attached.

I haven't yet looked at the detailed logs, but see no indication of major errors during this burn-in test so far.

Attached are plots showing Wakey battery voltage and phone battery level.

For this test, the phone is configured to send SPOT messages as well as diagnostic messages via wifi. At sea we will of course not incur the wifi power usage.

Got 495 SPOT messages, out of 725 total samples; SPOT success rate = 68%

 
May 24 - June 9 (16 days)

This test was also performed on Building B rear deck, physically configured identically to the May 11 test. But in this case, WiFi messaging was DISABLED - compare the following plots to see much lower power usage compared to the May 11 test. Note that the charge provided to the phone by the D-cell battery pack every thirty minutes was sufficient to keep the phone battery level at about 96 percent for the duration of the test. 

 Got 495 SPOT messages, out of 852 total samples; SPOT success rate = 58%

The last SPOT message was received on June 10. Inspection of the hardware revealed a broken corroded wire leading to the SPOT, as well as corrosion on a Wakey connector. Note that no effort had been made to waterproof the SPOT housing or the partly-latched Pelican case that housed the Wakey board. This corrosion may explain the overall lower SPOT success rate, compared to the May 11 test (success rate = 68%).

phoneBatt.jpg (image/jpeg)
WakeyBattery.jpg (image/jpeg)
WakeyBattery-may24.jpg (image/jpeg)
PhoneBattery-may24.jpg (image/jpeg)