Tech Log #002: Frozen computer, partial transfers
This is a slightly weird log entry, because not only did everything we do not end up working, it also ended up going slightly backwards more than forwards. But that’s alright – as astronauts say, “there is no problem so bad you can’t make it worse”.
Some time went in to searching for a 900MHz Xbee that is missing, it was in the orange operator interface that is usually paired with OG Bowie. Been looking everywhere but can’t find.
Brenda helped transfer the routerpi image. This lets us use a Raspberry Pi in a special configuration that she worked on to become an access point. It’s 16gb, so there wasn’t a lot of available space to store it. Ended up storing it on a usb key, but it wasn’t readable on anything other than linux. Went to use a separate RPi to read it, but its sd card must have been damaged, so had to reflash it. There wasn’t enough space on my computer to do that, so then had to find a different computer to do so.
Eventually the RPi was up, and we could read the contents of the usb key. Tried to transfer the file, but there wasn’t enough space available. The next guess was to transfer via sftp to my computer. However, then my computer became low on memory. This was happening simultaneously as I was trying to code something for the green foam board Bowie unit.
My computer froze since all space was used up, so all the progress was gone anyway, and all of the windows I had open and code ended up being lost, because a hard shut down was needed. Rebooting the computer worked smoothly, that was a positive note. Started an upload of the file to google drive, and this transferred successfully.
Time to regroup for tomorrow and come back at it with a clean slate. Oh yeah, and the search for the 900MHz Xbee will continue.
The tech logs will be more productive in the future. This just happened to be an anomaly.