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"Open source data logger for low-cost environmental monitoring"
The increasing transformation of biodiversity into a data-intensive science has seen numerous independent systems linked and aggregated into the current landscape of biodiversity informatics. This paper outlines how we can move forward with this program, incorporating real-time environmental monitoring into our methodology using low-power and low-cost computing platforms.
Low power and cheap computational projects such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi have brought the use of small computers and micro-controllers to the masses, and their use in fields related to biodiversity science is increasing (e.g. Hirafuji shows the use of Arduino in agriculture. There is a large amount of potential in using automated tools for monitoring environments and identifying species based on these emerging hardware platforms, but to be truly useful we must integrate the data they generate with our existing systems. This paper describes the construction of an open-source environmental data logger based on the Arduino platform and its integration with the web content management system Drupal which is used as the basis for Scratchpads among other biodiversity tools. (Full article...)
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