Field Notes

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Twitchell Alfalfa: 2016-04-01 13:00:00 (DOY 92)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
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Summary: New battery box, checked camera, new post for soil co2 box, got soil temps working on soil co2 system.

Alfalfa
2016-04-01

I arrived about 1pm. It was clear sunny and warm. The alfalfa is looking pretty good. The road along the south side of the field is almost dry and the ditch to the tower is dry and can be driven.

I put the battery bank sn BB-TA in a new battery box, a Rubbermaid 35-gallon Action Packer. The four batteries fit with room to spare. The wire from the batteries to the solar charge controller was a little short but worked. After moving the batteries the data system rebooted.

I checked on the camera. No photos. I didnâ€™t see anything wrong with the camera. I set it up again and it seemed to be running correctly.

I put in a new post of the soil co2 data logger box. The new post is a pipe and fits the U-bolt much better. A second U-bolt could be added to the bottom of the box.

I added a power/control cable and ground wire to the AM25T. I collected the soil CO2 data and uploaded a new program that collects the soil temperature data from the AM24T. TC 14 was not reading and I did not see anything wrong with the wire junctions at the AM25T.

I also noticed a possible bug in the soil CO2 program. It looks like soil co2 data was being recorded for the five minutes while the probes warm up but not for the 3 minutes after the warm up. I need to look at that data more carefully. I made changes to swap this behavior.

We still need to decide what to do with the SHF plates. They can be easily added to the soil CO2 system. That program will need to be updated again and the forced diffusion stuff can be removed since the new forced diffusion system will be completely self-contained. The met data logger program needs to be updated as well to remove the soil temperatures and the SHF and theta probes.

1 photos found

TA_autocam_20160401_1315.jpg ( 2016-04-01 13:15:02 ) Full size: 1920x1440
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