Probing Tips and Tricks
tips for getting the most out of your Snow Scope Probe
Probing Best Practices
We have put a lot of work into making probing easy and consistent for all users, but there are still some techniques that will lead to the most consistent and accurate results:
When first learning the “flow” it is helpful to have your phone out and open to the status page. Click on the Help icon for a particular status for more info.
A fast and smooth probing style will yield the best results. Try not to get stuck on any crusts and avoid stopping mid-probe and restarting. A high grip on the probe helps keep probes continuous through the entire length. If you are collecting deep profiles and grabbing the top of the probe is not possible, make sure your hand over hand probing is as smooth as possible.
Make sure that the sensor window is pressed into snow on entry for best results. With light snow it is easy to enter the snow without the window actually touching the top layer. This will result in the top layer of the snowpack being missed. One technique is to have the window facing you and to pull the probe slightly towards your body as you probe down through new snow.
Before probing into the snow, make sure to hold the probe with the tip slightly above the snow for at least 1 second. The force sensor performs a calibration and needs to be in air for this calibration to work properly. Do not rest the tip on the snow surface prior to probing.
Keep the probe still or pull the probe out at the end of your downward push. Once you stop probing do not continue to put pressure on scope at the bottom of your probe.
You do not have to stop probing when your hand is at the surface of the snow. If you can keep probing through soft new snow, the device will keep collecting data.
Auto-Connecting and Probing With Your Phone in Your Pocket
Your Snow Scope Probe is designed to be used with a phone, but your phone does not have to be out while you are using it!
To use your probe with your phone in your pocket/your app in the background:
At the beginning of your field session, open the Snow Scope App, turn your probe on, and make sure the app is connected to the probe. If it isn't, tap connect to connect to the probe.
Next, you can put the cover back on the probe, and lock your phone screen/put it in your pocket. It is ok to put your phone in airplane mode if you wish, just make sure to not fully close out of the app!
When you reach a location where you want to collect a snow profile, you can now just deploy your probe/remove the cover, and the phone should auto-connect. You can tell when it does by the Blue connection LED. If it doesn't sometimes it is because the background bluetooth on your phone went to "sleep" - learn more about handling this situation here.
Collect a profile, and it should transfer to your phone - you should hear a ding (or buzz if on silent mode) to indicate that a profile was transferred successfully. If an error was encountered, your probe status LED will blink red and you will not get a "ding" on your phone.
Put the cover back on the probe, collapse it, and repeat steps 3-5 to collect more profiles!
On your next day using the probe, your phone should remember the probe and connect to it when the app is opened.
Warning: If you collect profiles without a phone connected, the profiles will not have any location data associated with them
Using Multiple Probes and Phones
When multiple users have the Snow Scope App downloaded and are using the Snow Scope in the field, it is imperative that only a single user has their phone connected to the Snow Scope. This will make your phone- Snow Scope connection more reliable as the probe will not be trying to connect to two different phones at once. This is especially important when there is poor or no cell service, as your phone will cache all the profile data locally until service is reached. If multiple phones connect to the snow scope during a single field session without service, profiles will transfer to both phones, and then when those phones reach service, duplicate profiles will upload to the cloud, and data can be accidentally lost.
We recommend that for each field session, only 1 user is connected to each probe. If you need to swap phones during a field session, we highly recommend you only do so if you have cell service.
If you have multiple Snow Scopes in the field at the same time, it is appropriate to have 1 phone each paired to each probe. As long as the phones are paired to their appropriate probes, there will be no issues of probes connecting to the incorrect probe. It is also appropriate for a single user to take out multiple probes, and connect to each probe at different times with their single phone.
The main takeaway from all of this is that during a field session, multiple probes with 1 phone is ok, but a single probe with multiple phones is not.
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