Explore the vast range of titles available.

A low-cost data logging platform is presented that provides long-term operation in remote or submerged environments. Three premade “breakout boards” from the open-source Arduino ecosystem are assembled into the core of the data logger. Power optimization techniques are presented which extend the operational life of this module-based design to >1 year on three alkaline AA batteries. Robust underwater housings are constructed for these loggers using PVC fittings. Both the logging platform and the enclosures, are easy to build and modify without specialized tools or a significant background in electronics. This combination turns the Cave Pearl data logger into a generalized prototyping system and this design flexibility is demonstrated with two field studies recording drip rates in a cave and water flow in a flooded cave system. This paper describes a complete DIY solution, suitable for a wide range of challenging deployment conditions.

This project addresses the need for the implementation of low-cost acquisition technology in the field of vehicle engineering: the design, development, manufacture, and verification of a low-cost Arduino-based data acquisition platform to be used in <80 Hz data acquisition in vehicle dynamics, using low-cost accelerometers. In addition to this, a comparative study is carried out of professional vibration acquisition technologies and low-cost systems, obtaining optimum results for low- and medium-frequency operations with an error of 2.19% on road tests. It is therefore concluded that these technologies are applicable to the automobile industry, thereby allowing the project costs to be reduced and thus facilitating access to this kind of research that requires limited resources.

The Arctic Warbler (Phylloscopus borealis) is a cryptically plumed songbird with an uncommon Nearctic–Paleotropical migratory strategy. Using light‐level geolocators, we provide the first documentation of the migratory routes and wintering locations of two territorial adult male Arctic Warblers from Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. After accounting for position estimation uncertainties and biases, we found that both individuals departed their breeding grounds in early September, stopped over in southeastern Russia and China during autumn migration, then wintered in the Philippines and the island of Palau. Our documentation of Arctic Warbler wintering on Palau suggests that additional study is needed to document their wintering range. Our study provides hitherto unknown information on stopover and wintering locations for Arctic Warblers and indicates that this species may migrate further overwater than previously thought. The Arctic Warbler is a Nearctic–Paleotropical migrant—a rare strategy for songbirds—and a species of conservation concern that presents few analogs for comparison. This study presents the first individual tracks of migratory routes for the species using light‐logging data recorders. Using data from two individuals, we describe the timing of migration, high‐use areas during migration, and discover a possible new wintering location for the species.

Most species experience microclimate temperatures, that is, variable and fine‐grained thermal conditions determined by atmospheric conditions interacting with biotic and abiotic components of the earth's surface. Unfortunately, measuring microclimates at biologically meaningful grain sizes is challenging. We showcase the potential of fibre‐optic distributed temperature sensing (DTS) to quantify diurnal variation in microclimatic air temperatures during the growing season along a 135‐m forest edge‐to‐interior transect at 25‐cm horizontal resolution. We benchmark DTS measurements against the microclimate quantified with ultrafine wire thermocouples and more conventional sensors at 15‐m intervals along the transect. Diurnal measurements from DTS indicate maximal cooling of forest floor temperatures (up to −6°C) in the morning (around 8:00 AM) and well away from the forest edge. Negative offset values gradually increased during the day reaching zero (0°C) in the evening (around 21:00 PM). Synthesis. While both DTS and discrete point sampling with microclimate loggers allow to quantify diurnal cycles of microclimate gradients with unified spatial and temporal patterns, DTS provides accurate temperature measurements at a spatial detail nearly impossible to achieve with discrete point sampling. When applied over transects of several hundreds of meters—up to kilometres—fibre‐optic DTS is a cost‐efficient alternative offering substantial potential to advancing microclimate research.

This project addresses the need for an expansion in the monitoring of marine environments by providing a detailed description of a low cost, robust, user friendly sonde, built on Arduino Mega 2560 (Mega) and Arduino Uno (Uno) platforms. The sonde can be made without specialized tools or training and can be easily modified to meet individual application requirements. The platform allows for internal logging of multiple parameters of which conductivity, temperature, and GPS position are demonstrated. Two design configurations for different coastal hydrographic applications are highlighted to show the robust and versatile nature of this sensor platform. The initial sonde design was intended for use on a Lagrangian style surface drifter that recorded measurements of temperature; salinity; and position for a deployment duration of less than 24 h. Functional testing of the sensor consisted of a 55 h comparison with a regularly maintained water quality sensor (i.e., YSI 6600 sonde) in Mobile Bay, AL. The temperature and salinity data were highly correlated and had acceptable RMS errors of 0.154 °C and 1.35 psu for the environmental conditions. A second application using the sonde platform was designed for longer duration (~3–4 weeks); subsurface (1.5–4.0 m depths) deployment, moored to permanent structures. Design alterations reflected an emphasis on minimizing power consumption, which included the elimination of the GPS capabilities, increased battery capacity, and power-saving software modifications. The sonde designs presented serve as templates that will expand the hydrographic measurement capabilities of ocean scientists, students, and teachers.

While climate change has increased the interest in the influence of microclimate on many organisms, species inhabiting deadwood have rarely been studied. Here, we explore how characteristics of forest stands and deadwood affect microclimate inside deadwood, and analyse how this affects wood-living organisms, exemplified by the red-listed beetle Tragosoma depsarium. Deadwood and forest variables explained much of the variation in temperature, but less of the variation in moisture within deadwood. Several variables known to influence habitat quality for deadwood-dependent species were found to correlate with microclimate. Standing deadwood and an open canopy generates warmer conditions in comparison to downed logs and a closed canopy, and shaded, downed and large-diameter wood have higher moisture and more stable daily temperatures than sun-exposed, standing, and small-diameter wood. T. depsarium occupancy and abundance increased with colder and more stable winter temperatures, and with higher spring temperatures. Consistently, the species occurred more frequently in deadwood items with characteristics associated with these conditions, i.e. downed large-diameter logs occurring in open conditions. Conclusively, microclimatic conditions were found to be important for a deadwood-dependent insect, and related to characteristics of both forest stands and deadwood items. Since microclimate is also affected by macroclimatic conditions, we expect species’ habitat requirements to vary locally and regionally, and to change due to climate warming. Although many saproxylic species preferring sun-exposed conditions would benefit from a warmer climate per se, changes in species interactions and land use may still result in negative net effects of climate warming.

Animal welfare science is currently expanding beyond its traditional boundaries, from captive animals to those living in the wild. This current development is conceptually and methodologically challenging, but it could benefit from adjacent and more established research fields. Among these fields, biologging appears to be a strong candidate, as most intrinsic, location and environmental variables collected through biologging approaches could be used to assess animal welfare in the wild. To provide an objective view of the suitability of biologging to assess wild animal welfare, biologging was evaluated against the criteria that are currently recommended to assess animal welfare. This evaluation shows that biologging approaches could enhance animal welfare assessments in terms of completeness, informativeness and feasibility in the wild. However, their full implementation may be complicated by limitations in terms of validity, representativeness and disturbance, and by the different welfare perspectives taken by wildlife biologists using biologging approaches and animal welfare biologists. To exploit the full potential that biologging approaches could offer to assess wild animal welfare, their current limitations need to be overcome. Towards this end, recommendations are explicitly provided to enhance the validity and the representativeness of biologging measurements as welfare indicators, while reducing disturbance. To increase the visibility and the impact of biologging studies examining wild animal welfare, we also encourage wildlife biologists using biologging approaches to adopt the same language and perspectives as those used by animal welfare biologists. If current limitations are overcome, biologging is likely to be instrumental for the future study of animal welfare in the wild. Reciprocally, integrating animal welfare in biologging studies is expected to have a great impact on the whole biologging field by extending its current scope to a new and promising research area. Résumé La science du bien‐être animal est actuellement en train de s'étendre au‐delà de ses frontières habituelles, des animaux en captivité à ceux vivant dans la nature. Cette évolution est un défi conceptuel et méthodologique qui pourrait bénéficier de domaines de recherche adjacents et davantage établis. Parmi ces domaines, le biologging semble être un candidat de choix, car la plupart des variables intrinsèques, de localisation et environnementales collectées au travers d'approches de biologging pourraient être utilisées pour évaluer le bien‐être des animaux dans la nature. Afin de fournir une vision objective de l'aptitude du biologging à mesurer le bien‐être des animaux sauvages, le biologging a été évalué au regard des critères actuellement recommandés pour évaluer le bien‐être des animaux. Cette évaluation montre que les approches de biologging pourraient améliorer les études portant sur le bien‐être animal en termes d'exhaustivité, d'informativité et de faisabilité dans la nature. Toutefois, leur mise en œuvre peut être compliquée par des limitations en termes de validité, de représentativité et de dérangement, ainsi que par les différentes perspectives en matière de bien‐être adoptées par les biologistes de la faune sauvage utilisant des approches de biologging et les biologistes spécialisés dans le bien‐être animal. Pour exploiter pleinement le potentiel que les approches de biologging peuvent offrir pour évaluer le bien‐être des animaux sauvages, leurs limites actuelles doivent être surmontées. À cette fin, des recommandations sont explicitement fournies pour améliorer la validité et la représentativité des mesures de biologging en tant qu'indicateurs de bien‐être, tout en réduisant le dérangement. Afin d'accroître la visibilité et l'impact des études de biologging portant sur le bien‐être des animaux sauvages, nous encourageons également les biologistes de la faune sauvage qui utilisent des approches de biologging à adopter le même langage et les mêmes perspectives que ceux utilisés par les biologistes spécialisés dans le bien‐être des animaux. Si les limites actuelles sont surmontées, le biologging est susceptible de jouer un rôle déterminant dans l'étude future du bien‐être animal dans la nature. Réciproquement, l'intégration du bien‐être animal dans les études de biologging devrait avoir un impact important sur le biologging dans son ensemble en étendant son champ d'application actuel à un nouveau domaine de recherche en plein essor.

This contribution shows the possibilities of applying a low-cost, multi-purpose data logger built around an Arduino Mega 2560 single-board computer. Most projects use this kind of hardware to develop single-purpose data loggers. In this work, a data logger with a more general hardware and software architecture was built to perform measurement campaigns in very different domains. The wide applicability of this data logger was demonstrated with short-term monitoring campaigns in relation to outdoor air quality, human activity in an office, motion of a journey on a bike, and exhaust gas monitoring of a diesel generator. In addition, an assessment process and corresponding evaluation framework are proposed to assess the credibility of low-cost scientific devices built in-house. The experiences acquired during the development of the system and the short measurement campaigns were used as inputs in the assessment process. The assessment showed that the system scores positively on most product-related targets. However, unexpected events affect the assessment over the longer term. This makes the development of low-cost scientific devices harder than expected. To assure stability and long-term performance of this type of design, continuous evaluation and regular engineering corrections are needed throughout longer testing periods.

Li-ion battery packs are the heart of modern electric vehicles. Due to their perishable nature, it is crucial to supervise them closely. In addition to on-board supervision over safety and range, insights into the battery’s degradation are also becoming increasingly important, not only for the vehicle manufacturers but also for vehicle users. The concept of digital twins has already emerged on the field of automotive technology, and can also help to digitalize the vehicle’s battery. In this work, we set up a data pipeline and digital battery twin to track the battery state, including State of charge (SOC) and State of Health (SOH). To achieve this goal, we reverse-engineer the diagnostics interface of a 2014 e-Golf to query for UDS messages containing both battery pack and cell-individual data. An OBD logger records the data with edge-processing capability. Pushing this data into the cloud twin system using IoT-technology, we can fit battery models to the data and infer for example, cell individual internal resistance from them. We find that the resistances of the cells differ by a magnitude of two. Furthermore, we propose an architecture for the battery twin in which the twin fleet shares resources like models by encapsulating them in Docker containers run on a cloud stack. By using web technology, we present the analyzed results on a web interface.

Aquaculture farming faces challenges to increase production while maintaining welfare of livestock, efficiently use of resources, and being environmentally sustainable. To help overcome these challenges, remote and real-time monitoring of the environmental and biological conditions of the aquaculture site is highly important. Multiple remote monitoring solutions for investigating the growth of seaweed are available, but no integrated solution that monitors different biotic and abiotic factors exists. A new integrated multi-sensing system would reduce the cost and time required to deploy the system and provide useful information on the dynamic forces affecting the plants and the associated biomass of the harvest. In this work, we present the development of a novel miniature low-power NFC-enabled data acquisition system to monitor seaweed growth parameters in an aquaculture context. It logs temperature, light intensity, depth, and motion, and these data can be transmitted or downloaded to enable informed decision making for the seaweed farmers. The device is fully customisable and designed to be attached to seaweed or associated mooring lines. The developed system was characterised in laboratory settings to validate and calibrate the embedded sensors. It performs comparably to commercial environmental sensors, enabling the use of the device to be deployed in commercial and research settings.