Open-source Arduino-derived data loggers designed for field research

Abstract

Abstract. Automated electronic data loggers revolutionized environmental monitoring by enabling reliable high-frequency measurements. However, the potential to monitor the complex environmental interactions involved in global change has not been fully realized due to the high cost and lack of modularity of commercially available data loggers. Responding to this need, we developed the ALog series of open-source data loggers, based on the popular and easy-to-program Arduino microcontroller platform. ALog data loggers are low cost, lightweight, and low power; they function between −30 °C and +60 °C, can be powered by readily available consumer-grade batteries and solar panels, and can store up to 32 GB of data locally. They are compatible with standard environmental sensors, and the ALog firmware library may be expanded to add additional sensor support. The end-product is a set of robust and field-tested scientific instrumentation that is the direct descendant of dozens of individuals' contributions to the growing open-source electronics movement.

Open-source Arduino-compatible data loggers designed for field research

“…The hardware includes a set of subsystems to manage power, data storage, timekeeping, sensor interfacing, and connections to computers (for testing, clock setting, and programming). This hardware is tightly integrated with the ALog firmware library (Wickert et al, 2018a), which manages low-level utilities (power, boot sequence, fail-safes), on-board hardware (the clock and data storage systems, through their own libraries), and a library of sensor commands. The full system is programmable through the Arduino integrated development environment (IDE), which is designed for use by beginner programmers and therefore lowers the barrier to entry for environmental monitoring.…”

“…Photos of the ALog series of data loggers. (a) The ALog Shield 2.2 (Wickert et al, 2018b), which nests atop a standard Arduino board. (b) The ALog BottleLogger 2.2 (Wickert and Sandell, 2017).…”

“…We customized doxygen to include the README Markdown file, which includes instructional text and images, at the beginning of the automatically generated manual. The customized doxygen configuration is available at https://github.com/NorthernWidget/ALog/tree/master/doc (Wickert et al, 2018a), and the generated reference manual is included in the Supplement.…”

“…The ALog series comprises three main data loggers ( Fig. 1): (a) the ALog Shield 2.2 (Wickert et al, 2018b), (b) the ALog BottleLogger 2.2 (Wickert and Sandell, 2017), and (c) ALog BottleLogger 3.0 (Sandell et al, 2018) (Table 1). The ALog BottleLogger data loggers are standalone units (i.e., no builtin telemetry) that we designed for field research; version 3.0 has a more powerful microcontroller core and a dedicated 16bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), whereas version 2.2 Figure 2.…”

“…It nests atop a standard Arduino board (Barragán, 2004;Banzi and Shiloh, 2014), such as the Arduino Uno. The power consumption of this pair is too high for field deployment, but together these form a benchtop prototyping system that is compatible with the ALog firmware (Wickert et al, 2018a). The Supplement contains the electrical schematics and circuit board layouts for all three data loggers.…”