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README for glacier

This repository contains the hardware and software design for a two station geophone/accelerometer glacier installation. There are two stations connected via a point-to-point wireless link. The “glacier” station houses the sensors and the “lodge” station houses the internet communications.

Lodge

Summary

The Lodge station is composed of the following high level components:

  1. Battery Bank
  2. Solar Panels
  3. Charge Controller
  4. Raspberry Pi
  5. AC Mains Charger (Summer)
  6. Proxim Wireless
  7. ExplorNET Router/Dish

It’s function is to receive data from the glacier over the Proxim wireless link and then relay that information to the web. Note that it does this merely as a router/NAT gateway. The glacier itself runs software that connects to the internet. The Lodge station also has a hard drive backup of the data that the Glacier station has collection.

Hardware

This is a description of the hardware components. For wiring/connection diagrams see below.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B v1.2

https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-RASPBERRYPI3-MODB-1GB-Model-Motherboard/dp/B01CD5VC92/ref=sr_1_1

See ‘Software’ section for a description of the operating system and daemons/services/etc…

USB To Ethernet Adapter

Provides two extra USB ports as well as the Ethernet port for the Proxim.

Power Bus Board

This board consolidates a fuse as well as supplying connections for various voltage regulators. Fewer of the on-board regulator positions ended up being used as power consumption and plans changed.

The schematics and PCB for this board are in the power-bus/hardware directory.

Attached to this board are:

  1. 1 12V 2A voltage regulators (for powering a monitor during maintenance tasks and Obsidian) https://www.pololu.com/product/2577
  2. 1 5V 3A voltage regulators, soldered in place. https://www.amazon.com/1PCS-Converter-Regulator-Power-CPT-UL-1/dp/B075KCLDBC
  3. A 12V 3A regulator (mounted below) https://www.powerstream.com/DC3611.htm
Power Control Board

This board is used to turn on/off external devices, specifically the Proxim and the Internet (via a Relay) The schematics and PCB for this board are in the hardware/power-control directory. These can be ordered from OshPark.

Proxim Wireless Station

http://www.proxim.com/products/point-to-multipoint/tsunami-mp-10100-series

See Proxim Wireless section for details.

MorningStar Solar Charge Controller, Modbus to RS232 Adapter, and RS232 to USB Adapter

https://www.amazon.com/Morningstar-PS-MPPT-40M-Prostar-Charge-Controller/dp/B01N2773O8/ref=sr_1_1

See MorningStar Charge Controller section for details.

Batteries (x24)
AC Battery Charger

http://www.xantrex.com/power-products/battery-chargers/truecharge-2.aspx

This charges the batteries off the generator power that’s available during Lodge operating hours.

Internet Provider’s box and AC Inverter

https://www.amazon.com/BESTEK-300W-Power-Inverter-Adapter/dp/B004MDXS0U/ref=sr_1_19

It might be possible in the future to run the Internet directly from the DC, unfortunately we learned the power details related to this box too late to get that in.

Software

Scheduled cron jobs:
ScheduleNameTask
dailytimeSync time via ntpdate.
30minresilienceChecks for connectivity and or any other problems that a restart may fix.
hourlymorningstarRead MorningStar status over ModBus and write to logs.
hourlylogrotateRotate log files.
5minstatusLog disk status and uptime information.
5minlocal-backupCopy archived data to the external HDD.
5minglacier-logsCopy glacier logs to the lodge.

Glacier

The Glacier station houses the Geophone and other sensors itself and transmits their information, live, down to the lodge. It’s high level components are:

  1. Battery Bank
  2. Solar Panels
  3. Charge Controller
  4. Raspberry Pi
  5. Proxim Wireless
  6. Geophone

Hardware

This is a description of the hardware components. For wiring/connection diagrams see below.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B v1.2

https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-RASPBERRYPI3-MODB-1GB-Model-Motherboard/dp/B01CD5VC92/ref=sr_1_1

See ‘Software’ section for a description of the operating system and daemons/services/etc…

USB To Ethernet Adapter

Provides two extra USB ports as well as the Ethernet port for the Proxim.

Power Bus Board

This board consolidates a fuse as well as supplying connections for various voltage regulators. Fewer of the on-board regulator positions ended up being used as power consumption and plans changed.

The schematics and PCB for this board are in the power-bus/hardware directory.

Attached to this board are:

  1. 2 12V 2A voltage regulators (for powering a monitor during maintenance tasks and Obsidian) https://www.pololu.com/product/2577
  2. 1 5V 3A voltage regulators, soldered in place. https://www.amazon.com/1PCS-Converter-Regulator-Power-CPT-UL-1/dp/B075KCLDBC
  3. A 12V 3A regulator (mounted below) https://www.powerstream.com/DC3611.htm
  4. 1 Adjustable Regulator (set to 15V for the Geophone) https://www.pololu.com/product/2573
Proxim Wireless Station

http://www.proxim.com/products/point-to-multipoint/tsunami-mp-10100-series

See Proxim Wireless section for details.

MorningStar Solar Charge Controller, Modbus to RS232 Adapter, and RS232 to USB Adapter

See MorningStar Charge Controller section for details.

Batteries (x15)

Software

uploader

Monitors for incoming data, uploads the files, and then archives them.

Scheduled cron jobs:
ScheduleNameTask
dailytimeSync time via ntpdate.
30minresilienceChecks for connectivity and or any other problems that a restart may fix.
hourlymorningstarRead MorningStar status over ModBus and write to logs.
hourlylogrotateRotate log files.
5minstatusLog disk status and uptime information.
5minlocal-backupCopy archived data to the external HDD.
5minmirror-obsidianCopy obsidian data.
5mindata-rollerDelete old files to ensure free space on the memory card.

Operating System

Each of the Raspberry Pi’s is running an instance of Tiny Core Linux (piCore-14.1.0) Tiny Core Linux is specifically designed for embedded situations where reliability is important. Key features include:

  1. Low memory (runtime and physical)
  2. Resiliencey via a read only runtime.

TCL will start and run directly from RAM and any changes that should be saved across restarts need to be specifically saved.

Several changes were made to the default piCore image, documented below. Note, also, that the process for generating images is automated and stored in the tce directory. These scripts serve as a more authoriative source of documentation for how to regenerate these images, should tha tbe necessary.

Networking

The private network used by the Pis and spanned by the Proxim wireless is 169.254.128.0/24 This is the default network for the Proxim stations. The obsidian is configured to run on 169.254.127.0/24 Because the Pi’s only have one network port, USB Ethernet Adapters are used to provide a second one.

IPIface
169.254.128.129Lodge IP
169.254.128.130Glacier IP
169.254.128.131Lodge Proxim IP
169.254.128.132Glacier Proxim IP
169.254.127.130Glacier Obsidian Network IP

Startup

Startup is controlled via /opt/bootlocal.sh and /opt/bootsync.sh like any other standard TCL installation. These are configured to call machine specific scripts after common work is done. These are located under /opt/glacier and /opt/lodge

ScriptTasks
/opt/bootlocal.shConfigure Pi powersave mode. Start SSH/hamachid and start await-wireless.sh
/opt/bootsync.shConfigure DNS. Create folders that must always be present. Run ntpd.
/opt/glacier/bootlocal.shstart tunnellers for SSH and uploader, adc wrappers.
/opt/glacier/bootsync.shConfigure proxim (eth0) and obsidian (eth1) interfaces.
/opt/lodge/bootlocal.shStart tunnellers for SSH and rsyslog.
/opt/lodge/bootsync.shConfigure proxim network iface (eth1) Start DHCPC for internet connection on eth0.

Cron Jobs

A number of cron jobs are included by default on either machine (see above) Those scripts that only run at a specific machine are toggled during the image creation. They can also be customized via tweaking mydata.tgz (see TCL documentation)

Rsyslog

Tiny Core Linux uses a trimmed down syslogd by default. We opted to include rsyslog for the remote forwarding and configuration. There are patches in tce that are applied to disable syslogd and enable rsyslogd. Also, the configuration is available there as well.

Monitoring AWS Server

Can be a small instance, even free tier. This is only used to aggregate logs for monitoring and serve as a location for backup SSH tunnels to originate.

Proxim Wireless

Power

The Proxim wireless can be powered using 12V DC (max 3A) over the 12V/Access Port. There are directions in the Proxim documentation for creating an RJ11 cable to provide this power. This cable is then connected to the 12V 3A voltage regulator.

Hardware/Installation

Antenna is mounted to the side of the Laundry building at the lodge and was aligned using the Proxim aiming dongle. This dongle is connected to the 12V/Access Port and emits a tone at a frequency that indicates how good the alignment is. Because the 12V/Access Port is how we power the device in standard operation aiming is done while running on AC power using a PoE injector.

The Proxim station has an internal heater and can be mounted outside. A log of it’s temperature is also available in the UI.

The unit was grounded and the all the cabling was wrapped in weather proofing tape as suggested in the documentation.

Configuration

Only one thing was changed in the Proxim wireless configuration from a standard factory installation and that is the Channel was changed to 140 from 160.

The link status can be monitored via the Proxim’s internal web server (available on port 8080) In the out of the box configuration the interfaces are located at:

Lodge: http://169.254.128.131

Glacier: http://169.254.128.132

There is a script open-proxim-forwards that can be used to forward local ports to these interfaces over SSH to make browsing them easier remotely. For more details on the Proxim stations please see the reference folder for their manuals.

MorningStar Charge Controller

Configuration

Set the DIP switches to force 12V mode and to enable ModBus. All other defaults are acceptable.

Obsidian Accelerometer

Hardware

See design files for mounting information.

Configuration

See repository for an export of the configuation.

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