Research on the development of a low cost remote monitoring system for energy or environmental monitoring

Environmental monitoring is essential to help us understand global or local environmental systems especially as human activity is impacting on the viability of sustainable future ecosystems. There are different research philosophies that can be undertaken to establish what exists in the environment and whether it changes over time, for example field surveys or satellite remote sensing. However, both are costly in personnel or technology. Where long term studies are required, remote monitoring can be advantageous as data can be collected without the need for the researcher to be present. But has the disadvantage that data from a remote monitoring device will still need to be physically collected.

 This paper presents research on the development of a remote monitoring and data-logging system for energy and environmental applications. This device uses sensors to monitor voltage, current and temperature for off-grid energy systems, air and soil temperature, air humidity, soil moisture and photosynthetically active radiation for environmental monitoring. The device stores the data and sends it to a cloud-based store, either using General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) or Wi-Fi. The system can be installed where there is GPRS or Wi-Fi reception and monitored from anywhere with an internet connection. The data is presented in interactive graphs, maps and tables via an Internet of Things (IoT) web dashboard.