Tenth Field Trip to Alice Holt Forest
Pete’s guerrilla visit
On Thursday, 8 August 2024, Pete went for another guerrilla visit to install 2 more ECO-WORTHY 120-Watt solar panels arranged in parallel with the previous two for his Dendriphone installation, shown in the top photo. We will now keep an eye on it to see if it is truly self-sustainable.
Pete also had a quick look at the EcoFlow unit that controls the solar panels and battery of Streamer I Paula. Pete mentioned that the input solar power was at zero, and the charge was at 0%. This explains why the streamer stopped working on Wednesday 7 August, giving only 2 days of battery when I left it at 65% on Monday 5 August, with presumably, zero to low solar power input.
Anna’s guerrilla visit
On Monday, 12 August 2024, I went back to charge the EcoFLow unit of Streamer II Paula and inspect a bit more the power system, as well as more generally, to check both streamers and the installation. Also, I planned to record some more field recordings in the form of audio excerpts to get a better understanding of the sonic material that we are automatically capturing from the two locations, the natural soundscape and the installation soundscape. This should be helpful once we start analysing the batch of automatic recordings.
Streamer I Giorgio status
Since Luigi set it up on 3 August 2024, Streamer I Giorgio has kept streaming uninterruptibly, which is excellent news! Today, I could hear crickets’ chirps that were not present the previous week, combined with birdsongs, sounds of planes and human steps such as small groups of runners or walkers with their dogs.
Dendrophone status
When I arrived at the Willows Green trail, I was not sure if the Dendrophone was working because of the presence of silence. It was after a few minutes that I noticed the sound installation was working. You can listen to a few audio excerpts of how it nicely blends with the natural sounds. When I arrived, there was a curious group reading about the artistic intervention.
Streamer II Paula
For now, Streamer II Paula is the system that is less reliable due to the EcoFlow River solar power system not working properly. As reported by Pete a few days before, the battery charge was at 0% as well as the solar power input was at zero. I took the EcoFLow unit and charged it using AC charging from the Activity Centre.
I installed the EcoFlow app, which is very handy! While charging, it tells you the remaining charge time, and once charged, it tells you the time remaining until it gets uncharged again.
Once I brought back the EcoFlow unit, it kept giving zero as solar power input. My impression is that something in the pipeline of the solar panel is faulty because the solar power input always gives 0, even if setting it just below direct sunlight as shown in the photo below.
In any case, we can now enjoy the streamer with the charged battery, with an estimation to last 3.1 days according to the EcoFlow app (74h 46m using 2W/hour) or until Thursday evening. In fact, when checking the streamer yesterday, a group of kids was interested in the streamer and after their chaperone read the sign about the scientific purpose of the streamer, a kid said: “Good job people that are scientists, good job!” This is encouraging for them but also for us!
Follow-up
Next week, I would like to debug the EcoFlow solar panel by trying with a new solar charging cable, measuring if the solar panel keeps giving the expected voltage/amperage values using a multimeter and testing the solar panel in another space to avoid the shade of the canopies. I asked George, who said this is a common task and gave me a bit of advice on how to proceed with this type of debugging. More to follow soon.