Intermittent Issues with FED Devices Logging Data to SD Cards

[Yang Ge]

Hello all,

I’ve encountered occasional issues with FED devices failing to log data to the SD card. I’m using 10 FED devices and have conducted approximately 36 trials with each—around 360 trials in total.

In a few cases, the devices appeared to run normally during the experiment, but I later discovered that no data had been saved to the SD card. This issue has occurred across multiple devices:

• Device 1: 2 times

• Device 2: 1 time

• Device 4: 4 times

• Device 5: 1 time

Has anyone else experienced similar problems? If so, are there any recommended strategies to prevent data loss?

Best regards,
Yang

[Lex]

Hi Yang,

I suspect it might be the SD cards - I can't really think of anything else that it could be and sometimes SD cards can have issues.  Can you take Device 4 that seemed to have the most issues and try it with a new SD card?  Unfortunately there's no way to get back data that wasn't recorded - I realize that sucks but hopefully if you can identify the issue it won't happen in the future!  -Lex

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[Alcantara, Ivan]

I’m sorry! This has happened to me before, but usually if I open the faulty SD cards in a different computer (PC) the data would pop up, even though they wouldn’t pop up on my Mac (but my Mac could still get the data from other SD cards so it might be an SD card/computer combo issue). It only happened to me once that the SD card completely didn’t save any data. I recommend checking first before running some experiments. 

Ivan C. Alcantara

Neuroscience PhD Student

Brown University - National Institutes of Health

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[Matt Gaidica]

I would bet on the SD card, too. How old are these FEDs? This is what you would expect if an SD card has exceeded its specified write cycles (this can be as low as 10,000 writes for micro SD cards). You could also take out the Arduino board and inspect the SD card slot and contacts. Any debris or oxidation on that area could cause intermittent issues; if the boards are dirty see: An Unofficial FED Cleaning Protocol.

I've reviewed some of the power specifications and make some recommendations on micro SD cards if that's a consideration: Micro-SD Card Low Power Showdown – Part II

[Yang Ge]

Thanks to all for the wonderful suggestions, i will follow all your recommendations and try to figure out the issue, will keep you posted!