Soil Sensor Network at the Desert Botanical Garden

Overview

We plan to establish a wireless sensor network at the Desert Botanical Garden to measure and report on soil conditions. Our goal is to collect salinity, moisture, and temperature readings from interesting locations in the Garden's Harriet K. Maxwell Wildflower Trail area. We then plan to store the sensor data in a database and make it available through graphical and textual presentations on the web. The figure below shows the system architecture overlaid on a map of the study area.
Sponsors

The iMPACT Lab deeply appreciates the generous use of the Garden's grounds and the time and knowledge of its staff in the development of this project.
People
Principal Investigator
          Sandeep K. S. Gupta

Students
          Ken Bannister
Reports
  • View graphs of the most recent soil conditions from the sensor prototype.
     
  • Trends in Soil Conductivity. Oct 2008. HTML
  • Custom-built Soil Probe Interface to Wireless Mote. Aug 2008. HTML
  • Soil Sensor Prototype Initial Results. Dec 2007. HTML
History and Roadmap
Sep-Dec 2007 Integrate Soil Sensor with Mote
Design and build custom circuitry to interface a sensor with the wireless/control module. Implement TinyOS software to command and read the sensor.
  Create Base Station
Create an embedded Linux system to act as a coordinator for the sensor motes and a gateway to the Internet over an 802.11 (WiFi) link.
  Setup Network Storage
Create a database repository on the Internet for sensor data, and forward data to it from the sensors via the base station.
  Data Query and Display
Use a web interface to query the stored data for time based display of data.