Environmental monitoring system based on low-cost sensors

Abstract

Temperature and humidity measurements provide useful information on multiple areas of civil engineering application such as Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), Structural System Identification (SSI) and structures rehabilitation. Majority of the existing commercial systems are so costly and also these measurement paradigms need many reference spots for a full-scale structure. The aforesaid paradigms are based on collecting data through smart devices, transferring information to each other and in the final stage processing the obtained information collaboratively through cloud computing or the others technologies. Taking into account the above information and obstacles, utilizing the Open Source Platforms (OSP) microcontrollers like Arduino as well as low cost sensors are attracting more and more attention. This paper gives a comprehensive information about the most determinant aspects of the aforementioned kits in terms of their pros and cons, installation procedure, communication protocol, number of the required connections and specific characteristics of the data acquisition system.