Hi all, I am unable to solve a big mystery. I have two OFMs - high res and low cost, another high res is with a friend who is unable to use it at the moment because of this issue.
Context: Once the v3 server alpha release was there I installed it first on the one then on the other microscope - no problems whatsoever, things were working perfectly well!
Problem: Then, starting this month, I am no longer able to run smart scans - the process stalls, and I get the “lost network” popups, I have to hard-refresh the page to proceed using OFM. I checked cable connections, burned fresh images, used two different laptops (macs) and browsers (Chrome, Safari), used several wifi networks, iphone’s hot spots, and ethernet cable connection - nothing seems to make a difference anymore, I get 3-10 images scanned and stitched and then nothing. Really not sure what is causing it all
I think it is not a real network error, but the virtual network that the components use to talk to eachother on the Microscope’s Raspberry Pi.
If you have been doing a lot of scans for a month, that is a lot of images. One thing that you have not yet changed is the physical SD card on the microscope. The SD card is a weak link for a Pi because it has the operating system as well as your data, and they are not really designed to read and write many times. They have all sorts of ways to even the use of different parts of the card, and to move away from parts that don’t work, but they do fail. I would try installing on a new physical SD card.
I would not say I have been doing a crazy amount of scans, but this is a very good hypothesis, because everything else works perfectly. However, I can no longer find a setting where I could save the scans to a USB stick… Am I being blind?
@WilliamW You were absolutely right, the SD cards were the culprits (all three of them apparently). Just got a fresh one and every is working smoothly! But then it means the cards (SanDisk, 32 GB) got nuked pretty quickly, in a few months! And I was by no means scanning day and night.
With the v2 server I tried to use the UBS for storage but somehow kept losing the connection. Nonetheless, I understand that writing to a USB card would be a better option for the future. @JohemianKnapsody how do I use USB for storage in V3 server, I cannot find this option in the browser version of the server (I’m on a Mac).
Thank you for the help, I can finally do scans again, yay!
That is an incredible image! Are you able to tell us a little more about the sample?
@JohemianKnapsody is working on a method to help us capture the last bits at the very edge of the scan.
I think to get a USB working in v3 it may be possible to change the scans directory within the file /var/openflexure/settings/ofm_config.json. But this won’t be very reliable. @JohemianKnapsody has made an issue for us to reimplement a way to save to a USB. This won’t be in alpha 3 (which we hope to release today), but hopefully in alpha4
Hm, it seems the v3 server is “eating through” my SD cards super fast! I only get to do a few scans and the Network Error reoccurs, even stage mapping stops working and the settings for camera and stage calibration stop working… Can it be true? Am I doing smth wrong? Is it the rPi that is damaged possibly? (unlikely, no?)
I should have bought a High-Endurance MicroSD Card but I guess but I was trying to be cheap
I have just reinstalled the server v2 (2023-04-13-raspbian-openflexure-buster-armhf-full) on the same SD card and the scanner is running just fine… Maybe it is not the SD card problem after all? I so miss the stitching and all the wonderful new features server v3 introduced! Looking forward to the next version
I’m glad v2 works again. I’m not sure form those details how to debug what is wrong with v3.
New alpha is a couple of weeks out. We didn’t get to USB storage unfortunately, the devil is in the details doing it properly. But we do have some big improvements to scan planning, and white balance and to the UI. Plus some low level changes that will push our development forward.
