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

• Main Author: Monica Maceli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Code4Lib 2018-11-01
• Series: Code4Lib Journal
• Online Access: https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/13943

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.