Arduino Nano data logger

[Chris Fastie]

I posted a few research notes in the last month about logging environmental data with an inexpensive device based on an Arduino Nano and a data logging shield. This device is proving itself to be a convenient way to try different sensors without doing much if any soldering. It will not last very long when powered by batteries, but is really good for short term data collection or longer term logging where mains power or alternative energy sources (solar panels) are available. The sensors I tested include:

• Barometric pressure, temperature, humidity: https://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/05-03-2017/monitor-your-data-logger
  
• Luminosity (visible and near infrared): https://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/05-11-2017/dual-ndvi-ultra-probe-unit
  
• Infrared temperature: https://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/05-26-2017/portable-thermal-ir-temperature-logger-unit

I am now trying to replace the Arduino Nano with a Pro Mini which can last much longer on batteries. It's much harder to make this available to others as a solder-free project, but it has the potential to log environmental data for many months on battery power.

Chris

 

[Jeffrey Warren]

Hi, Chris - i've been meaning to write back to this for almost two weeks -- first, i'm just super excited at what you've put together here. It's amazing. 

I talked with some colleagues and we're interested in getting a lot of the data logging pages linked together and organized on the site, and in that spirit, I started a kind of stub page here:

https://publiclab.org/wiki/data-logging

I also tagged together the notes you posted onto a page using the tag you've created:

https://publiclab.org/wiki/nano-data-logger

It's looking great, though if you want to organize it differently, please go ahead!

I'm really interested in what we can post to the "overall" data-logging wiki page that focuses on things you can do with a data logger -- sort of like the ones you've posted -- but that aren't necessarily specific to one device. To the degree that's possible! 

Also -- I saw the spreadsheet you posted -- amazing. Do you think we can not only link to that from the wiki page, but copy in some to the "Comparisons" section of the page, so people can find what's the best match for them?

Jeff

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[Chris Fastie]

I reworked the Nano Data Logger wiki page. That seems like a useful page. 

The more general Data Logging wiki page is a messier task. For example, the loggers listed in the Google sheet (I think you linked to a different sheet in your post) are a tiny subset of the things people consider to be data loggers. The Arduino universe is huge, so lots of people have built devices that save data from sensors. Several non-Arduino microcontroller or computers have also been used to do this. I guess the Google sheet includes the few Arduino based devices that are cheap (<$70), are sort of DIY, and have been used by members of the community to record environmental variables.

The list mostly ignores devices that use radios to send the data somewhere, even though most people who want to monitor environmental variables really want to see it on the web in real time, which is not that hard to do. So that list includes a somewhat arbitrary subset of the very low end of accessible data logging (not monitoring) approaches.

Another messy aspect of the data logging universe is that it's easy to collect data about temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure, but most Public Lab environmental logging requests are for variables that are hard or expensive to measure (air and water chemistry, toxic compounds, etc). You can use a $20 device to log data about methane, particulates, and aerosols, but only if you spend another $1000 on sensors and calibration equipment. So it's important to be up front about what these loggers can do out of the box and what they might do if a rich chemist wanted to work with one. I don't know much about that part of the logging spectrum.

Also, copying information from that Google sheet to a wiki page ensures that one or the other will become outdated. There should be one place where information is kept up to date, and publiclab.org seems like a tough place to make publicly editable tables unless everybody knows more than I do about markdown or html.

Chris

[Jeffrey Warren]

Thanks, Chris, for your thoughts! I think there are a couple places we could make a bit of progress, even if it's not totally all-encompassing. 

I definitely hear you on the table issue -- but I think we could embed a subset of the table directly from Google Docs, especially if we embedded only a few columns, and sorted it so that some of the most sought-after columns tended to the left side and we just said "view the whole sheet for more detail"

As to the arbitrariness, this set of them are reasonably inter-related, and Arduino based as you mentioned, and I think that makes a big difference in terms of what our community's combined knowledge and experience can offer support on -- so while we're sure to miss many other projects out there, some high overlap on what we as a group are interested in makes this page pretty useful. But definitely we should always say something like "there are lots of other solutions out there, but we've chosen to focus on..." etc.

For radio transmitting, I also agree, but I think we could potentially (after tackling the basic data logging function on one page) break that out into a more specific page, maybe one called "wireless-data-logging" or something? 

Thanks!

Jeff

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[Chris Fastie]

I didn't know you could embed Google sheets, but it works pretty well: https://publiclab.org/wiki/data-logging

So that adds a lot of information to the wiki.

[Jeffrey Warren]

Awesome. I added a link to the full sheet. 

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 7:13 PM, Chris Fastie <cfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

I didn't know you could embed Google sheets, but it works pretty well: https://publiclab.org/wiki/data-logging

So that adds a lot of information to the wiki.

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[Stevie Lewis]

Wow that page is looking great! Would be awesome to draft some intro activities people could do with a few of these loggers in the water. I'm interested in exploring some of this at Regional Barnraising.

Best,

Stevie