If you have just received a new Cosmic Pi unit here are some instructions to get you up and running. If you prefer to watch rather than read, you can check out our video here:

Video!

Step 1:                            

Remove from packaging

Step 2:

Place on a flat, non-metallic, surface

Step 3:

Connect the GPS antenna – screw the connector in carefully. The antenna should be able to see as much sky as possible, so consider putting it out of a window, on a windowsill, or securing it to a window. The antenna module is magnetic, so can stick itself to a metal surface.

Step 4:

Connect the power. Plug in the power adapter to the wall and put the jack carefully into the front of the comic pi unit.

Step 5:

The power light should come on (sorry, it’s rather hard to see!) and after a few minutes the event light will start to flash too. The power light will start to blink once a GPS fix has been acquired, depending upon the weather and how well your antenna can see the sky this can take a while – typically it’s 5 minutes, but in poor conditions it can take much longer.

Step 6:

Connect to the Cosmic Pi wifi network, there is no password. You may need to persuade your device to remain connected even when there is no internet (since our cosmic ray detector doesn’t provide its own internet connection) – typically there is a box to tick saying ‘remain connected even if this connection does not provide access to the internet’.

Step 7:

Open a web-browser and navigate to http://192.168.0.1 and it should present you with your cosmic ray data! Sometimes the graph isn’t up to date as the GPS lock is required to put the correct timestamp data into the database – so make sure the GPS antenna can see the sky and try again in 5 minutes. If your computer supports the bonjour protocol, you can navigate to http://cosmicpi.local as an easier to remember alternative.

Please note that the times on the graph are UTC, therefore may not be synchronous with the time zone in your location.

Step 8:

You can read all of the sensor data off the web-page and download the cosmic ray event graphs directly. A full extraction of the database (i.e. all cosmic ray events from the device) can be extracted using the advanced, password protected, feature set accessible by the menu on the left hand side of the web page. If you want to access this please get in touch with us.

Addendum:

We noticed late in production that there is a small software bug which prevents some units from showing the altitude (pressure readings are unaffected). If you see that the altitude is showing 0, this is likely due to the bug. You can always manually calculate your altitude either via the GPS position or the pressure reading (https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1224585971)