SensorKit
wireless sensor networks in 3 steps
Wireless Sensor Networks for the Rest of Us
It seems the whole world is abuzz about wireless sensor networks. But despite the hype, these systems have remained the purview of the engineers and computer scientists who design them rather than the useful tool for the environmental scientists who need them. SensorKit is conceived of as a way to make wireless sensor networks accessible to People: it's an advanced, powerful tool for sensor data collection that doesn't require advanced technological know-how. By providing simple, tested configurations of commercially-available hardware, free, easy-to-use software, and step-by-step tutorials, we're aiming to make wireless sensor networks for environmental science as simple as setting up a standard home computer network.
SensorKit is your simple, yet sophisticated, end-to-end system for environmental monitoring.
We provide a (growing) list of independently-tested, industry-standard environmental sensors that are compatible with SensorKit. You mix and match these sensors to create the data streams that match your needs.
Almost any sensor from any manufacture that uses standard inputs and output can be used. Currently, SensorKit is being used to measure wind speed, solar radiation, air and soil temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and soil moisture. Learn more about sensors.
Step 1 Choose your sensors
Your sensors are connected to a powerful but flexible data acquisition system—all the software is provided and the controls are intuitive. Our starting configuration supports up to 32 sensors on a single node.
Need more sensors? Or need to distribute multiple nodes? No problem. The nodes are expandable and communicate with each other within your network. Learn more about the data acquisition network.
Step 2 Build your data acquisition network
The third part of this system is a free, intuitive, online database called SensorBase, the database for people who don’t want to manage a database. SensorKit comes pre-configured to upload your data to SensorBase for safe keeping and easy access.
The power of a database and the ease of web services allows you to easily share, protect, search, and manage your data using your favorite web browser. Learn more about data storage and access.
Step 3 Store and access your data
We’ve tried to make the prospect of using an environmental sensor network as simple and intuitive as possible. But underneath the user-level simplicity there is a powerful and effective end-to-end system, with independent sampling rates and modes, metadata documentation, runtime control, and local data caching and storage. And we’ve only just begun. Features under development include high-level system and sampling design tools and data custody transfer capability among others.
Simplicity through sophistication
Terrestrial Systems
