EnviroPi: Taking a DIY Internet-of-Things approach to an environmental monitoring system

Monitoring environmental conditions in cultural heritage organizations is vitally important to ensure effective preservation of collections. Environmental monitoring systems may range from stand-alone data-loggers to more complex networked systems and can collect a variety of sensor data such as te...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Monica Maceli
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Code4Lib 2018-11-01
Series:Code4Lib Journal
Online Access:https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/13943
Description
Summary:Monitoring environmental conditions in cultural heritage organizations is vitally important to ensure effective preservation of collections. Environmental monitoring systems may range from stand-alone data-loggers to more complex networked systems and can collect a variety of sensor data such as temperature, humidity, light, or air quality measures. However, such commercial systems are often costly and limited in customizability and extensibility. This article describes a do-it-yourself network of Bluetooth Low Energy-based wireless sensors, which seeks to manage earlier-identified trade-offs in cost, required technical skill, and maintainability, based on the Raspberry Pi™ single-board computer and a series of microcontroller boards. This builds on the author’s prior work exploring the construction of a low-cost Raspberry-Pi™-based datalogger, iterating upon reviewer and practitioners’ feedback to implement and reflect upon suggested improvements.
ISSN:1940-5758