Tech Staff Meeting Notes January 7, 2020

The top priority is always repair of down stations.
NM problem stations
ET problem stations

Most of the meeting was focused on updating the Duty Table. Duty Table updated August 2019

Priorities

• Station repair and routine maintenance
• Plan for DM purchases
• Test Xetawave 900MHz radios on link between STLE and South Pemiscott HS
• End of year budget spending
• GFM replacement TC test and install
• New valve for propane tank on the Money Pit
• AMTS FCC applications

Please verify lat/lon with each station visit. Four digits past the decimal are required (~10m).

News & Highlights

There will likely be additional DM money in 2020 though not as much as previous years. There may also be funding to take over some of the SLU stations though that funding will not be part of our base funding and will only be renewed annually. The new 5-year agreement for the base account begins Feb 1 and funding levels will be set yearly rather than for all five years at once as it was done with previous agrements.

GFM TC replacement should arrive Wednesday 1/8. We'll first put it in the test well both with and without pool-sand to test the long period noise. Then we'll install at GFM the first available weather window. Long-term, a new vault will be installed.

Mitch is working on a new agreement for the Tower at New Madrid. Horizon Tower Group bought the Tower from G&D and the lease with Hunter Enterprises will transfer to them. There will be a new agreement between CERI and HTG.

Mitch is also working on a renewal to the agreement with WASL for the tower at Lenox.

Mitch will get updated balances from Michelle for end of budget year spending. We should have about $20-25k based on estimates from October. A TC for PWLA would be a good use of it.

We will be requesting a no-cost extension for a portion of the 2019 Deferred Maintenance supplement. No equipment has yet arrived from ASL and it is preferred to acquire batteries and associated hardware closer to the time of install rather than store a cache of 70 AGM batteries for 6 months. Radio testing is also still underway and it would be preferable to mock up the prototype prior to a final decision.

There was a discussion on the accuracy of station locations, particularly for older stations. A handheld garmin accurate to 4 decimals in degrees (about 10m) physically at the station is still the preferred method.

SIS

XP retirement. ET will be entirely digital by summer 2019 if all goes as planned (hahaha). Spring 2020? Need a plan for NM.

RTCC on Ubuntu 16 is able to get /parameters but fails with /status-control on loopback and RTPD hangs. It works in Ubuntu 18 but openvpn does not. Wait for that fix then leapfrog OS to 18.

A p-plant Contractor performed a detailed review of the two lieberts in room 218. The report is under review and a PO is being issued by p-plant to complete the repairs.

NMSZ

NMDown

Make permanent, repair receive mast for WYBT at HOPT install four 52 watt panel.

Strongmotion stations NAIT, SEAR, and NHIN are having trouble moving up the priority list. of the three, SEAR is most valuable. NHIN is probably a fuse but can wait until there is a new obisidian to replace the 5TD.

NODE Tasks

DBB:

MKTA:

LNXT: Generator propane tanks needs a valve. The tank will need to be emptied to replace it. It's currently about 40% full so we'll need to top it off after the repair. The last fillup was August 2016 and cost $1623 for 725 gallons. Jim's Generator expense summary is here.

NMAD:

DBB at NMAD loses connectivity when the node is running on battery (i.e. when the AC power is down).

AZTN/HDBR: Need to pull the 200' sensor at the weigh station. Probable water damage. There is no budget for this. Should we try to repair the sensor at MPHB and put it at HDAR2 (MPHB is over two decades old, possibly closer to three)? Should we turn off the HDAR2.*.20 channels until the sensor can be replaced?

CERI:

ETSZ

CPRT needs new VPN creditials to connect to new server that replaced rhydra4. Currently udp is sneaking through on the reftek rdp but need the credential to make direct connections with two-way communications.

DYTN GPS pod needs a firmware upgrade.

Camera at Star Mt no longer has a supported web interface. Steve is looking into a new one as well as basic cameras for all the other nodes.

We have 4 USGS funded upgrades, and will have 9 remaining under the Choctaw project.

Geobits are working well

DYTN and GRBT are using the new AMTS spectrum model with a single 50KHz channel. There is a power splitter on the radio at Star Mountain to connect two antennas and receive both stations, 6-c each, on the same channel. The web ui for the radios is a pig (use ssh instead) though it works well with the geobit web UI.

John is working on FCC applications for the Choctaw links using the 10/13 study done by L&G.

ASTN-MTTN had antenna upgrades and the GE radios were replaced with Freewaves. It remains unclear why exactly the GE radios did work though the appear much more sensitive to degraded signal strength. This links repeats 9 channels and MTTN has a lot of RF noise so the GE radios should be less problematic on strong links with a single station.

Replacement station for GTTN and RBNC needs a new plan. A cell modem would provide more options.

Need to remove antennas, coax, and any other hardware from the tower at Greentop. John and Chris will schedule a trip.

ETDown

STAR Node

Needs a new camera.

BCRT had an intermittent 40Hz spike.

Move PMTN due to excessive noise and vandalism. John has a site and sent a draft MOU to Mitch. The University did not ask for changes and asked for the WMA director to sign first, its currently in Nashville for approval. A portable was installed and shows no surprises, it should a good quiet site.

HPNC Node

MTTN Node

GPS

New station near Clifton, TN was installed the first week of December, 2019. There is currently no telemetry. The plan is to telemeter to a nearby water tower, then to a local community college on public internet. James is requesting a formal station name but needs a lat/lon for it.

RLAP NetR9 is dead.

MAIR not tracking satellites.

AG Network

FDL

The FDL wiki is here: https://umwiki.memphis.edu/display/FDL/CERI+FDL

MISCELLANEOUS

The seisnet group on umdrive is at http://umdrive.memphis.edu/mwithers/seisnet You will need your uuid and password.

The seisnet wiki is at https://umwiki.memphis.edu/display/CERITech/CERI+Tech You will need your uuid and password.