In the middle of a lake, downloading data

Posted by yes_oui_si_ja@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 50 comments

I am the de-facto tech guy at a small educational facility in the countryside of Sweden.

One of the many weird projects we do is surveillance of fish. Track movement patterns, publish data etc.

The fish have a transmitter inside, and we have placed antennas all over the lake system and at some narrow passages in streams. Pretty cool stuff, but I'm not very much involved.

So its time again for my colleague (60+ years, view size 200% in the browser) to change batteries in the antennas and download data.

So he has to get our boat on a trailer, drive to a ramp, put the boat into the water, drive the boat to the antenna, put the antenna into the boat, replace the battery, and then download the data. And then everything in reverse. Half a day, sometimes one day. Ideally, he can do this for many antennas during one trip.

He comes back, exhausted, only able to have done this for one antenna.

"Oh, I think I'll need more days for this project this year. The download took me almost an hour" he tells me. "Probably a lot of fish data, now that we are tracking more fish..."

My bullshit-detector goes off. "What? How much data are we talking about?"

"How can I know? It's data for almost a year of detections!"

I try to debug this narrative. "So tell me, how do you download this data?"

"I take the boat to the antenna, open my laptop, which I can't do on a rainy day, start this synchronisation software, connect to the internet using my mobile phone, then the software detects the antenna and I press download."

I stop his story: "Wait! What? You are connecting to the internet? Why?"

"I don't know. Otherwise it doesn't work. Maybe the antenna uses the Internet to connect to my laptop? How should I know?"

At this point I seriously consider being pranked.

"Give me your laptop! And an antenna!" He obliges, getting an antenna not currently deployed from our storage.

I start up the software. Put the laptop offline. Try to connect to the antenna. It works immediately. It's Bluetooth, after all! 1.5MB of data available. Now I try to download the data. An error. "You are currently not connected to the server where you want to store the data."

Hmm. Server? Open the settings of the software. Sure enough, my colleagues default folder is on a network server. facepalm I change the default folder to Desktop/fishdata and retry the process.

2 seconds. Finished.

The VPN our laptops are on is pretty shaky, especially via a mobile hotspot out on a lake. An hour for "download" (actually upload) sounded excessive, but it made somewhat sense.

Afterwards, I quickly saw that the manufacturer had free mobile apps for easier download in the field.

Now my colleague doesn't need to wait for a dry day anymore.

I sometimes fear for the day I might become this out of touch with current technology.

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canadajones68@reddit

You know, this could've happened to anyone. Sure, it's easy if you've thought about it and know all the details. But you only need to be a little tired when you set up the software to point it to network storage, you know, where all the stuff goes and where the fish data will live eventually. It works beautifully when you have internet, and when you leave for the boat ride, oh, you need Internet. All kinds of software needs that now, oh well.

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handlebartender@reddit

I know there have been at least a couple different iterations of this over the years, but I'm always intrigued by the notion of virtualised disk/volume/dir sync, whereby if you're on the network, your writes get syncd to the network device, and when you're not on the network, nothing happens but you've still got access to your local copy.

Not quite the same thing, but I'm a happy user of Syncthing, which does this at the dir level. The syncs aren't immediate, but it's super handy to have.

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canadajones68@reddit

Directory sync is very nice, but when you're hardwired, it can be even nicer to just work directly off of network storage. It can save a lot of headache not to have to deal with multiple copies of things.

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handlebartender@reddit

Oh no doubt. And network storage by default rarely considers the traveling/disconnected user.

I remember researching this some years ago, to see whether there was a slick solution available. I did find one that was promising, but its use seemed to be limited to higher learning institutions, not the corporate jungle. I don't recall the name of it, but I do recall that all member storage (regardless of where it was being served from) ended up as part of a unified tree hierarchy; your client could join any part of that tree to a local mount point, if memory serves.

And now, trying to remember what this project was called is going to fester in the back of my mind for the rest of the day....

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Equivalent-Salary357@reddit

Unfortunately, it happens. Fortunately for me, it is happening 10+ years after retirement.

Unfortunately, that fact isn't as comforting as it sounds at first, LOL.

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handlebartender@reddit

As someone in the proximity of retirement age, I find that both concerning and perplexing.

It strikes me as being as plausible as a doctor well into retirement developing a symptom and thinking "oh who could possibly know what might be causing that".

Although to be fair, I've had many "well that was patently obvious" moments in my career, after doing the ol' "walk away, come back later" trick, and/or rubber ducking the problem to a coworker/friend/family.

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Faded_Ginger@reddit

My husband and I were both IT support. Since retirement, he has turned into a complete user. (Dude, are you kidding me? This is what you used to do for a living!🤦‍♀️) I'm also in charge of explaining social media and current slang.

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DirefulAtom@reddit

It must be baffling to see an IT professional turn into who they used to troubleshoot for. How has that been day to day?

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Faded_Ginger@reddit

It's no biggie; it's just amusing. If I had spent the last five years of my career working the call center, I probably would have done a brain dump afterwards too.

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fuknthrowaway1@reddit

I know a fair number of people who work in environmental sensing and the like. Knew a guy in college that went EE -> biology, got introduced to his friends, and on and on.

Just after the turn of the century one of them was involved in a biodiversity test project, basically just watching a half mile of stream with high-res cameras for foxes and the like.

The cameras were donated, new, expensive, and had WiFi.

Except they didn't use the wifi for anything except uploading images from the Pentium-in-a-Pelican that ran them.

You had to walk up to each one with a laptop, press a button, and they'd connect to a preconfigured SSID to upload their files.

It was taking the field tech on the project eons to collect data, like a full day every week. And his presence for so long, on a schedule, was going to fuck with the results.

One night my friend and I were out at the bar, he was asking a bunch of us if maybe there was a better way. Someone else was in the middle of asking questions about the hardware when a random psych major in the next booth interrupted with the answer.

See, she had worked for university maintenance for a year and she knew they had a pumping station close to the test stream with internet.

So go get yourself some satellite dishes or something, stick 'em on Pump House #7, and go push all the buttons at the same time.

It wasn't that simple. They had to talk to facilities about access, speak to someone else about mounting a series of impermanent fixtures to the building, prepare remediation plans for when the stuff was removed, and get permission to spend money from the grant on coax and antennas.

But it also was that simple. They set it up, did kind of a best guess where the antennas should be pointed, and sent a volunteer to go push all the buttons.

When she returned 15 minutes later they thought something was wrong.

Nope. She'd hit every button, the lights had all turned on and green, and, by the way, a mile in 15 minutes was kiddie shit.

An hour later the uploads finished.

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Prom3th3an@reddit

Did they have a traveling-salesman problem solution for the shortest route to all the cameras and back?

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fuknthrowaway1@reddit

Naw. The cameras were all in a straight-ish line, at regular intervals, all on the same side of the stream (better sun for the solar panels), and there was a decent path. No bridges, no curves to cut, no obstructions, nothing.

I'm sure there were better places to put them if the goal was to actually watch and count animals, but the study was more "How to better design future studies using cameras" and "How to process a huge amount of images that may or may not contain animals" than it was an actual biodiversity study.

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blind_ninja_guy@reddit

Oh great the government's even tracking the fish with technology now. The surveillance state really gotten out of control!

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yes_oui_si_ja@reddit (OP)

I've actually talked about all this data not being very GDPR compliant and the ethics evaluation only talking about the surgery and anaesthetics, but no mention of the fishs right to privacy.

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LegitWinter@reddit

I have to believe this is a new sentence.

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MrHappyHam@reddit

It's just to help solve fish-crimes! The common minnow aren't having their privacy infringed!

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Planetx32@reddit

Maybe he just wanted to spend the day fishing.

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PKZsarcasticMirror@reddit

Wouldn't it be just a little better to actually GET the data on where the fish are before trying to catch them? (Yeah, I know that some purists may call that cheating...)

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qtntelxen@reddit

They're not fishing, they’re surveying. The fish have trackers attached and there are antennae in the lake talking to the fish trackers. You have to be on the lake to talk to the antennae. Now, if you can't download anything, then you have a nice excuse to be out on the lake for several hours. But you also should not be fishing up your survey subjects.

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PKZsarcasticMirror@reddit

Guess that I should have put in the /s for the obtuse...

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AlaskanDruid@reddit

Nah. Using /s is basic communication.

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HeimrArnadalr@reddit

If you have to use /s, you shouldn't be using sarcasm.

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Tiara-di-Capi@reddit

Now THAT is really funny.

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AlaskanDruid@reddit

If you don't know how to communicate, you shouldn't communicate.

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yes_oui_si_ja@reddit (OP)

Exactly! Thanks for answering for me!

Actually, the trackers are surgically inserted. We catch them in small streams using electric fishing.

And yes, we might have indulged in some fishing while visiting the antennas...

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Loading_M_@reddit

Actually, if you do the data download totally offline in like an hour, you could then lie about how long it takes and spend the rest of the day fishing.

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popejupiter@reddit

Honestly, this was where I thought this was going. "Damn downloads are taking forever! Guess I'll have to be out there all week. Shame..." Meanwhile he's wrapped up the downloads in an hour and spends 7 or so on the lake trying to catch his limit.

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InsGesichtNicht@reddit

Be some interesting data.

"A couple of them randomly stopped fir a bit and then sped towards the shore before dropping off the trackers."

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yes_oui_si_ja@reddit (OP)

A bit late to answer, but as you might guess, these fish are mainly species worth preserving. The species that we've tagged most are called "asp", pretty big salmon-like fish.

They are not protected year round, but the goal is actually to lessen restrictions to allow recreational fishermen to try their luck during low-risk periods. As soon as we know when and where they are most vulnerable, we'll only leave that period and area protected.

We like to fish ourselves and would like to avoid a permanent ban.

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PKZsarcasticMirror@reddit

Yeah, I KNEW that I should have put the /s in the reply but by the time I thought of it, alas, too late... Funny story, I actually met a guy in Ontario, Canada that was doing this exact job in the early '80s for Ontario Hydro (Generation - Regions). He had to check fish (tagged or not) for specific conditions and he had to document whether or not the fish were caught (then released) either above or below the (either generation or flow control) dam. Interesting times...

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DasAllerletzte@reddit

Be aware of phishing attempts.

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Admirable-Purpose120@reddit

Of course he went fishing. How else do you tag the fish?

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Linuxmartin@reddit

I'm just glad the trackers don't require battery replacements

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TheBestMePlausible@reddit

And you just fucked it up for him forever.

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jmjedi923@reddit

smh not even the fish can have privacy anymore...

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androshalforc1@reddit

Hmm. Server? Open the settings of the software. Sure enough, my colleagues default folder is on a network server.

Will duh IT mandated that all info be stored on the server you are not allowed to store locally no exceptions.

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Turtledonuts@reddit

To be fair to your colleague, innovasea and all of their competitors are dead set on making things less intuitive and pushing all of their products into cloud based or proprietary options. They make great products and dogshit UIs.

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justaminion32@reddit

I honestly thought this was going to be a story of the colleague lying to get in some fishing or relaxation time. This is much more wholesome and must have been entirely frustrating!

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Linuxmartin@reddit

So he has to get our boat on a trailer, drive to a ramp, put the boat into the water, drive the boat to the antenna, put the antenna into the boat, replace the battery, and then download the data and then everything in reverse

You're telling me he has to put the old batteries back in, and when the antenna is back in the water, bring the boat all the way back? That sure sounds inefficient

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wielandmc@reddit

And there was I expecting the twist to be that the data collectors were cellular data enabled and he could have been sat in a warm dry office downloading the data remotely every week....

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yes_oui_si_ja@reddit (OP)

These exist! They are just much more costly and also right now the battery is the bottleneck.

But yes, you can actually activate live notifications on your phone for those systems. "Mrs Fishy has been detected near Moldy Bay" or something like that.

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Algaean@reddit

Heh - is the manufacturer an Icelandic company? I used to work for a company that sold them, we bought them from the icelandic company 😎

Neat little setup, as I recall.

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yes_oui_si_ja@reddit (OP)

Sorry, late! The company is InnovaSea, which has offices all over the world. I think they might be US originally, but I'm not sure.

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