SYMP 14-1 - Cheaper, Smaller, Lower-Power: Using The Internet Of Things for Ecological Research and Learning.

Ecology has a long history of adapting innovative technologies for making measurements on organisms and monitoring their environments. Advances in hardware miniaturization, increasing availability of radio communications (WiFi, Bluetooth and others), and the ability to store and process data “in the cloud” have provided ecologists with new platforms for measuring, monitoring and manipulating the environment. In fact, these in combination have opened up an era of inexpensive, small, and low-power devices that can be adapted for a wide variety of ecological missions. Our team has adopted many of the elements of the Internet of Things (IoT) for quantifying environmental conditions and for driving actuators. We tested the utility of the IoT ecosystem as data collection and communication devices in a Plant Physiological Ecology course, using an experiment that tests the fitness of plants in a greenhouse. WiFi-enabled Arduino-like microcontroller boards with input and output capabilities were used as low-cost dataloggers to which temperature and relative humidity sensor boards were connected. The students configured the hardware and software, and created a greenhouse IoT sensor network consisting of nine nodes spread across the benches of the greenhouse. The nodes communicated with a vendor’s server for data display and storage. Each AC-powered data logging node cost about $25. We found a seven degree temperature discrepancy across the sensor network due to higher solar radiation loading on one end of the greenhouse. This allowed a thermal intervention to minimize the spatial variation in greenhouse air temperatures. Another application couples light-modulated communication, or “LiFi” with IoT devices to provide power for on-the-fly programming and data transmission via radio backscatter. These boards are powered by tiny solar panels that use sunlight or supplemental lighting of greenhouse environments for powering the IoT boards. The power requirements are on the order of μW, or about 0.0001 that of WiFi, Bluetooth, LoRa and NFC radio communications. In essence, these microcontrollers act as battery- and cable-free dataloggers. Our results show that air temperature and soil moisture are readily monitored with the novel LiFi platform. Moreover, microcontrollers can serve actuation purposes, such as controlling irrigation systems or closing the lid on automated gas samplers. LiFi is not without challenges however, especially with regards to networking traffic control. Nevertheless, the hardware and software of the Internet of Things are valuable resources that can provide low-cost, flexible solutions for research and learning purposes in ecological monitoring, measurement, and control.