ProDave Posted June 30, 2017 Author Share Posted June 30, 2017 I thought the A didn't have the ethernet port so is it one of the B versions? I am wondering about the history of this unit. It was sold as "new" by the UK distributor of these units. But we have already established the real manufacturer EBAC have stopped making them. There are a few things that I have noticed. One is the water connections clearly have been connected as there's ptfe tape in the threads? just testing perhaps? But also a number of the cable looms have paper labels wrapped around them with hand written labels. I'm wondering if it might have been an in house training unit? They are now aware it's missing the memory card so I await their response which I don't think will happen until Monday. I will have another look to see if I can find the missing memory card anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 Sorry, you're right, it looks like B model 2. I'm pretty sure they still have the click-click SD card socket. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted July 5, 2017 Author Share Posted July 5, 2017 The missing memory card was posted to me on Monday and it arrived today. I can now report that it is all working okay and I can connect to the unit's dashboard. I can't see (or have not yet found) this quiet mode setting that was mentioned. But the important thing is I can now customise the temperature compensation curve. I also see a load of event log entries from 2015 so this "new" unit appears to have had some limited use 2 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 (edited) The event logs will be on the SD card, and may well be commissioning test data that may not have anything to do with your unit at all, especially as the card didn't come with the unit. It's well worth imaging the SD card now, before doing anything at all, so you have a back up, as there have been reports of SD cards wearing out under some conditions on the RPi, especially is there are a lot of log files being written to it on a regular basis. IIRC, a card will tolerate around 100,000 write cycles or so, which sounds a lot, but some have reported that cards fail after a while all the same. My personal experience is that I get around 3 years life out of a 32Gb card on my dash cam, and that writes a lot of data to the card all the time the car is running. Even so, for the sake of 15 minutes time and the price of an SD card, making an image and storing it safely seems a good plan. Edited July 5, 2017 by JSHarris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted July 5, 2017 Author Share Posted July 5, 2017 Good point, I will take a backup before the unit is put into use in anger. I remember when programming my Arduino for my solar PV Immersion dump controller, the data logging I did on that deliberately wrote data to the entire memory in sequence, rather than writing to the same few bytes and "wearing them out" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 A lot depends on the SD card, I believe, as some have built in wear levelling, some don't. I made the mistake of buying a cheap, no-name Compact Flash card for one of my video recorders and it failed after just a few months, decent brand name cards last for years. You can reduce the size of the card image a lot by using a partitioning tool to reduce the size of the largely unused partition, then imaging the card. I tend to use 8Gb cards with RPis, and imaging the whole 8Gb for every back up is a pain, so I tend to create a master image that has the big partition reduced right down to as small as I can make it, then image the card and that way the image file is a lot smaller. Best to make a back up image (not a back up of the files) first, and then play around reducing the partition size on that, rather than risk messing up the original card. It's also a lot easier to play around with partition resizing in Linux than it is with Windows. Making an image is easier and faster with Linux, too, I've found. There are some online tutorials on reducing RPi image files sizes that are useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 (edited) 3 hours ago, JSHarris said: It's well worth imaging the SD card now If you can, try and hunt around and see what script they have written to run the unit, probably Python, though may be C. Be even better if it is not encrypted and you can have a poke around in it. I have not had any SD cards fail while logging get, but then I usually 'play about at Christmas' and make a new one. Just looked at one of my log files and it has 1.6 millions unique lines in it and seems to be running fine. It logs every 6 seconds and has been doing so since 10/02/2017 (had the occasional inadvertent switch off). Edited July 5, 2017 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted July 5, 2017 Author Share Posted July 5, 2017 I have just had a look at the memory card (and taken a backup) this is all that is on it: That didn't work very well. I will try a better listing tomorrow, have to go now....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 6, 2017 Share Posted July 6, 2017 9 hours ago, ProDave said: I have just had a look at the memory card (and taken a backup) this is all that is on it: That didn't work very well. I will try a better listing tomorrow, have to go now....... You can't just copy the files from the card with a file manager in Windows. Windows cannot see the Linux files on the card in the two other partitions, it can only see the boot partition usually, so they won't show up in something like file manager. Also, this is a bootable SD card, with the operating system on it. You can image (not copy) the SD card easily enough, either from the Linux command line (not recommended unless you know what you're doing, as it's possible to screw up) or by using an imaging tool. For Linux and Windows there is an open source tool called Etcher that will so the job, but it's a bit clunky. For Windows there's a free utility called Win32DiskImager that does a pretty good job. These tools make an image of the SD card, complete with all the partitions (there will probably be three on that card). This saved image can then be used to create another bootable SD card, using the same imaging tools, but in write, rather than read, mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted July 6, 2017 Author Share Posted July 6, 2017 So what you are saying is I can make an image and copy it under windows but I can't see what's on that copy using windows. But if I then plugged that copy into the ubuntu laptop I would then be able to see what's on it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 6, 2017 Share Posted July 6, 2017 Yes, Windows can't normally see all the partitions on Linux boot device like this. You can see all the partitions if you plug it into a Linux machine, but be careful, as this is a boot device. If you just plug it into a Linux box the chances are that it will automount and all three partitions will come up in the file manager. Linux doesn't always behave nicely when hot-unplugging devices, to it's worth remembering to unmount the device before unplugging it, just to be on the safe side. Best to just image it first to be safe, as once you have an image file saved you can easily make a duplicate card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted July 6, 2017 Share Posted July 6, 2017 Make an image of it and write it to a new card. Then check the new card is working and 'archive' the old one (put the original in a safe place). You can get utilities for Windows that can read Linux drives, but I have not found a good free one yet. Try: https://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1159 I use Win32DiskImager and had no real problems with it. https://portableapps.com/node/36350 If you are using a Windows PC then SDFormatter is useful. https://portableapps.com/node/23594 Be very careful when writing an image as I once wrote to my Windows partition and lost about 2000 pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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