Good day;
I'm experiencing some issues with the transfer of the jpg images from the CC640 camera to a 512MB industrial Flash card attached to the NL115, which is connected to a CR1000. I am using RS485 transfer protocol with a MD485 between the camera and the CR1000.
Everything was working fine for months and now the images are not being stored. If it check the IP address via internet explorer at the scheduled time of the photos being taken (every 15min), I can see the image trying to transfer (eg I see CRD/0055_00156551.JPG for example. CRD is the flash card, 0055 is the pakbus address of the camera 00156551 is the incremental image name). if I look 15min later the file has increased by 1 so I suspect the camera is working properly. The flash card is formatted to FAT32, and as mentioned, worked fine for 5 months. If I remove the FLash card I believe the images should then be stored on the CR1000's usr drive, but they do not. I've reformatted the flash card and saw no improvement.
there was been electrical storms in the area so lightning is a possibility. the camera is 100ft up a tower and not easily accessible. the rest of the gear is at the base of the tower, but is 4hrs away from my office (I can connect remotely via IP though).
Can anyone think ideas to assist in troubleshooting this? Has anyone ever had a MD485 fail before? Or how I could test that it is working properly? One option is to drive out to the site, take off the MD485 and connect it to another device and test it locally, but figured I'd see if someone else has ever had the same problems before.
thanks for your help!
SJP
This is one I happen to know a little about, but maybe not in all the details.
First thing to check is your logger's OS. Versions prior to 17 have a bug in the filemanager that can result in running out of filehandles, and the results look like what you're describing. The problem occurs if an active file transfer is interrupted for any reason, e.g., LoggerNet timing out. I could see this clearly in the logs, as the number of files queued on the logger's (USR in our case) drive increases by one on each download failure.
The filehandles can be cleaned up by formatting the drive. This kept us going (with OS16 loggers) until we could flash a new OS in there.
Regarding the MD485, we apparently did have a failure in one, or at least everything else seemed to troubleshoot ok. Our site with this problem is rather remote (1 hour helicopter ride on the Alaskan north slope), so more troubleshooting is unlikely for a while, but at least the camera should be storing images on its attached card. Cause of the presumed failure would be a wild guess, but electrical activity might be a likely candidate.
Good luck!
Ken