The unit worked fairly well, out of the box but never seemed to get enough solar to keep the battery functioning. I have been manually charging this device for most of the year even though it sits on a tree stump with direct south access and a largely open sky for 60% of the day.
Then it stopped charging completely and stayed that way for months. I recently took it down and found that the solar card connector needed to be re-seated which re-established the charging but I still get severely insufficient charging.
I live at 42 degrees North latitude and wondered if the angle if the solar panel needs to be adjusted to compensate. My friend runs one in Japan (same latitude and he has no issues with collecting enough sun to keep the battery charged. That comparison suggests that the these two devices are not operating the same.
Over the last couple of months, I have been noticing the highly irregular reporting with hours or days between points, even though the battery is well charged through.
So … that is the current state … mostly broken: won’t charge effectively and now won’t record data effectively either.
I would be interested in any ideas from the team, especially from the design folks who might suggest what the erratic nature of the data collection is all about, all of a sudden?
Thanks for sharing the details of your airnote. I got my airnote a while ago and had similar issues, since one of the air notes I have here is hardly in direct sunlight. I resolved it by adding a much bigger solar panel on top. If you want to know how I did that, please feel free to contact me.
Another airnote is located next to a purple air (for comparing with the air note) does not get sunlight at all, but runs on a USB cable and reports every 5 minutes.
Thanks Rob, I am disappointed that there is nothing said about the solar panel and the set-up of the AirNote (hours of direct sunlight required to stay effectively working, angle of mounting the solar panel relative to locations (latitudes) where it is to be set up, etc).
However, with the failing recording now being seen (even though the only explanation offered is ‘too low battery charge’ (which isn’t the case in my set-up), I am afraid that this is the first signs of failure of the hardware in which case I am not very to invest anything more into a failing component.
I seem to remember that these devices were rated/planned to have a 10 year life. Mine is a sad example barely able to complete 8 months of service before failing.
Hey @CHRtoo, sorry to hear that you’ve been experiencing some issues with charging, and we’d definitely like to help you get those resolved. I am going to follow up with a DM to get you set up with a replacement device and also to see if you’d be willing to run a few additional devices in parallel as an experiment. Given your location, it would be great if we could capture some data around panel placement, battery size, and the like. I’ll be in touch soon.
