Breaking Ground Science--not getting it to work

[Klapaucius]

I have not used these before. I have an engineer and a scientist, but I cannot get them started.  What am I missing here?  Why is my photovoltaic panel producing no power?

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

That reading on the solar panel is almost certainly a bug- the central station reports 1 power being generated (by the solar panel) but 2 being used (by the station and the weather analyser). You need more power, either with a better engineer deploying the solar panel to get more power from it, or with MOAR-er, more panels.

[Streetwind]

Honestly, the setup shown in the screenshot should work, assuming the panel has been deployed by an engineer. Even a 0-star engineer should get the panel to produce 2 power, and only 2 power is required by the setup.

I'll go have a look if it'll work for me...

[Blaarkies]

Not all of the deployable science equipment gathers science on Kerbin (the Mystery goo machine did nothing for me). I don't know about the others, I think the grand slam worked though.

But your setup seems fine (barring the lack of electricity, just add more solar panels), putting this same setup as is on Mun should start uploading science every few Kerbin days

[Streetwind]

Yeah, it works for me, and yeah, the solar panel doesn't display correctly.

@Klapaucius, your solar panel was not deployed by an engineer. Else the experiment control station would show "Total Power Available: 2".

I have no idea why the solar panel shows units produced as 0. It does the same thing for me; I tested it with both a 0-star and a 1-star engineer. Same result each time. Then I loaded up an older save where I had a surface science setup on the Mun, and there, both solar panels correctly showed 2 units produced. Mind you, those panels were set up in an older version (1.11).

So either 1.12 bugged out the display of newly deployed surface solar panels, or this effect happens if you set it up on Kerbin. Not sure which it is right now.

Either way, it's a display issue only, and on the solar panel only. The rest of the parts appear to work just fine, and the solar panel does produce power if it was set up correctly.

 

[Klapaucius]

I read a bit further and it says I need a power unit for each experiment. I wonder if with one power unit and two experiments, the whole thing stops working. Anyway, I flew out another plane with a bunch more solar collectors and it seemed to work--at least the weather got transmitted.  I did not realize that was a muliti-day thing. I guess you normally just leave and the science trickles in while you are doing other things?

[jimmymcgoochie]

@Klapaucius Yes you need to leave it to gather the data over time. Those solar panels will generate more power if they’re deployed by a higher level engineer, the exact numbers are in the part description.