The quality really has gone down in the past 5 years or so.
I seal the seam between the two pieces of metal with aquarium silicone
and then wrap the whole ibutton in parafilm before deploying them.
The whole thing is embedded in marine epoxy and deployed in the
intertidal, where its submerged daily. I still have some failures,
but nowhere near the 66% mentioned by a previous poster. It's most
likely the seam between the metal parts that is most sensitive to
submersion.
You might also be interested in these:
Modification and miniaturization of Thermochron iButtons for surgical
implantation into small animals
http://www.springerlink.com/content/d806346722741317/
Robert and Thompson, 2003 K.A. Robert and M.B. Thompson,
Reconstructing Thermochron iButtons to reduce size and weight as a new
technique in the study of small animal thermal biology, Herpetol. Rev.
34 (2003) (3), pp. 130–132.
Fernando P. Lima and David S. Wethey 2009. Robolimpets: measuring
intertidal body temperatures using biomimetic loggers. Limnology &
Oceanography: Methods
7:347-353
- Sarah
On Jun 18, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Susan Herrick wrote:
This is a great idea except that a paint dipped button would not be
readable. I take my buttons out half way through the field season
to dump
the data and reset them. Then at close of season I dump them and
shut them
off. The paint would have to be stripped off and reapplied each
time. I
agree it is a loss of a very useful tool.
Susan Herrick
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 11:42 AM, malcolm McCallum <
[email protected]> wrote:
You might go to a local paint or hardware store, even the big box
stores
like lowes, and buy a can of sealant. I think they sell rubber
paint coat
tool handles (like pliers). If you dip the ibutton in this
sealant, it
will
be very waterproof and still record your data.
Hope that is helpful
Malcolm L. McCallum
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 9:32 PM, John Gerlach <[email protected]>
wrote:
I've been using iButtons for 4 years to measure water temperature
which
allows me to determine ponding depth through time. The batch that I
bought 4
years ago was essentially waterproof and their failure rate ran
about 5%
per
year regardless if they were immersed or not. This seemed to
mirror the
experience of other users. I bought a new batch last December and
just
determined that 66% of the immersed the new iButtons failed. I
haven't
opened any of them up but I assume that the failures were caused by
leakage.
To me this indicates that the manufacturing process has changed. The
supplier responded to my inquiry simply that they are not
warranted to be
water proof. All I can say is that the change means that we have
lost a
very
useful tool.
John Gerlach
--
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Managing Editor,
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