Week 9:
New Sensor Parts and a Fun Meeting

July 21, 2021

Tuesday morning, Chandler and I worked to make it possible for the sensor to sleep for short periods of time to conserve battery life. Despite how straightforward that seems, it is actually more difficult than you would think. Neither of us has a lot of experience in computer science, so it has been taking much longer than expected. Luckily, we expect the new parts that we will be trying out will be arriving later this week.

Chandler and I took a trip out to the maritime center to attend the first citizen science meeting for a new program in the late afternoon. USCB, Adopt-a-Stream, and the folks at the maritime center are all collaborating to start a program for citizens to sample, collect, and report data on the freshwater sources near them. The meeting was about two hours and had a decent turnout of 20 people. It was exciting to witness the start of a new program that will collect data to be used in both regulation and science. It was very hopeful to see so many regular people concerned about preserving their homes and creating a baseline for future use. Sometimes, it is difficult not to be cynical about the future when you spend all day studying how much worse the climate crisis is going to get and why it has happened.

After all the speakers presented, there were so many people who were eager to volunteer with the program. I talked with Lindsey, one of the speakers. She works for the state of South Carolina in the Department of Health and Environmental Control. She works as an environmental manager testing freshwater and is also a part of Adopt-a-Stream. She is one of the main coordinators for this new program. Thanks to Lindsey, all the collected information will be added to the state’s database for public, scientific, and regulatory use.

Wednesday came around, and it was covid day, only we had to delay the start of the lab due to a leaking pipe. It was quickly resolved, and I got a pretty funny picture of Professor Tye on the table and Z carrying cleaning supplies. It was another fun but long day. I really enjoy working in the lab, even though it can be a bit tedious.

The isolation boards came in on Friday, finally! After looking at the board, Chandler and I realized that the isolation boards can be coded to turn off. This is really good because we were not having any luck trying to code a sleep switch the other ways. The plan is to reassemble the sensor on Monday to include the isolation boards; over the weekend, we put out the sensor to ensure that everything is working as it should.