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Audiomoths stopped recording early - SD issue?

in Device Support

My audiomoth unit stopped recording after 3 days only,

while 33.8 GB were still free and batteries are reported good

with a tester.

SD card (FAT32): reported by windows of 57.6 GB;

TOSHIBA 64 GB micro 3 XC I

Configuration file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uxt12u4m2gale6n/CONFIG.TXT?dl=0

The first valid file was

27/06/2021 05:05 230.400.488 20210627_050000.WAV

Recorded at 21:00:00 24/06/2021 (UTC) by AudioMoth 24410E085728D5E5 at medium gain while battery was 4.8V and temperature was 12.8C.

The last valid file was:

24/06/2021 21:05 230.400.488 20210624_210000.WAV

Recorded at 05:00:00 27/06/2021 (UTC) by AudioMoth 24410E085728D5E5 at medium gain while battery was 4.3V and temperature was 10.6C.

Then I have 5 weird files:

01/01/2098 00:03 488 19700101_000326.WAV

01/01/2098 00:05 196.608 19700101_000457.WAV

01/01/2098 00:05 294.912 19700101_000511.WAV

01/01/1601 02:00 0 19700101_000000.WAV

01/01/2098 00:07 589.824 19700101_000721.WAV

all of them with no comment field in the wav header.

Was this an SD problem?

If so, could we have a list of "certified" SD cards?

2 answers1 reply

3 Comments

Alex Rogers

Jul 05, 2021

I would reformat the card and try again. Or try a SanDisk Extreme card as SD card varies significantly in their energy consumption so the predicted consumption may not be accurate. This isn't a particularly stressful recording cycle - 5 minutes in 30 minutes - and your AudioMoth shouldn't have problems running this schedule.

Alex Rogers

Jul 04, 2021

SD cards are quite variable but we always use Sandisk Extreme cards - https://www.openacousticdevices.info/sd-card-guide. Make sure you reformat them before use if you are writing lots of data, rather than deleting files, as some operating systems will just hide the files rather than marking them as deleted.

Could the files with the strange time stamps have been generated when testing in DEFAULT mode before deploying?

Agustin Lobo

Jul 05, 2021

Replying to

Thanks. I doubt I tested in DEFAULT mode at all, although the files could be leftovers as I did not reformat again before deployment.

But my main concern is: can we assume this is a SD problem? Can we discard another issue with the unit itself? I understand we have to test, but I would appreciate knowing your opinion as the test takes few days. If you think this is probably a SD problem, we can change and deploy again, going to check the SD card after few days (I understand we can just check the SD while the unit is not recording and then put it back again without need of reprogramming the unit).