Our Abstract

THE PROBLEM

Imagine wanting to study how the microclimate changes throughout a large area of land. Typically you would need to put various sensors all along the property. Retrieving the data from each sensor would require gaining physical access and manually extracting a memory card. With multiple sensors, manually finding and connecting each sensor to a computer is a very inneficient use of time. Time wasted means resources and money lost. A sensor could be high up in a tree, down in a ravine, or across a river; it would be impractical to remove the memory card from each sensor every time you needed to gather data.

This problem can experienced throughout nature preserves, national parks, large agricultural farms, and any other large areas that need to be monitered over time.

OUR SOLUTION

We are creating a simpler and wireless way to gather data with a self-sufficient data-gathering sensor, and a mobile device that gathers and stores the data from the sensor. When the mobile device is within close proximity to the sensor, an automatic data transfer is induced and stored to the mobile/ back-pack housed device. This would allow for streamlined data gathering from hard to reach sensors, making for a faster and easier process.

CHALLENGES

A few potential problems that we might run into are power consumption, wireless range, and the communication between the two devices.

We plan to use a combination of a small solar panel and a battery for the sensor. We don't see power consumption of the backpack device to be an issue since there will be plenty of room to put a rechargable battery.
The range may vary based on where the sensor is placed. The more trees and bushes in between the sensor and the mobile device could shorten the effective communication distance.
Since we will be transferring data, proper data transmission is key. The radio antennas we plan on using take care of most error correction, so we will need our progamming to further this.

Completing this project would mean the creation of a low-cost system that has the capability to gather data more efficiently over a large area. This exact project is tailored to solve Professor Halle’s problem at the SSU preserve, however it could be scaled to gather data at large area that is too big for classical network coverage.