project: a remote-access climate and weather logger system...

Hi All,
I am an ecologist studying impacts of climate change on biodiversity. Measuring climate variables in remote locations is a major challenge in my work. Arduino looks like it has great potential as a flexible, modular control system for remote logging applications.

There has been previous discussion of this sort of application on the forum: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1265391221

And some research applications are out there: Critical Zone Observatory

But there is room for more development, especially in flexibility, robustness, and data access. I am very new to the Arduino community, but I am interested to make contact with people who would like to be involved in developing some of these ideas further? I have placed some further info about what I have in mind here on my blog. : http://rainforestbird.wordpress.com/open-source-logger-project/
Cheers

Like the initiative, but the acronym i just dont know : OSCLA ???

LOCAL = LOgging Climate Array Live
LOCO = LOgging Climate Online (but were not loco?)
or

SMILE = sensors monitoring in live environment => and the logo is of course :slight_smile:

Hey. Good Post providing valuable information regarding Arduino-remote application. Additionally, one can even use various other remote support services such as logmeinrescue, gosupportnow etc. in order to establish remote connection between computers.

ecopraxis:
Arduino looks like it has great potential as a flexible, modular control system for remote logging applications.

One thing that you will find out about Arduino is that there has always been somebody who has trodden the same, or a similar, path before you. This particularly applies to data logging, and you should find it well-suited.

Remote is a relative term, but you can bet your grandmother's pension that somebody has had a seriously remote Arduino measure something and then send a text about it over a solar powered satellite phone. This may be deemed cheaper and more reliable, as well as quicker, than sending one of the natives up there to winkle out the SD card and bring it back. If remote simply means a long way away but still within the bounds of reticulated power and the internet, the latter can be usefully employed.

A common way of using the internet is by using cosm https://cosm.com/ it is common because it is painless and you may find it useful. Cosm can provide both real-time information graphically and historical accumulated data files.

Here is an example of a cosm feed. https://cosm.pachube.com/feeds/83153

I'm only interested in temperature and water-flow but, once you have established the principle, you can do practically anything. This is still a work-in-progress, showing just two thermometers and the calculated difference. There will be three stations initially, one at home, one several hours drive away under a ski lodge and the other even further away and in the opposite direction. Both remote stations log data to an SD card as well, but this is essentially just a backup. The former one will need to operate for about 90 days unattended but an SD card can handle that.