PROJECT CURACAO
Remote sensor monitoring in the Caribbean
Part 5: Deployment and Results SKILL LEVEL : INTERMEDIATE What is Project Curacao? This is the fifth part of a series discussing the design and building of Project Curacao, a sensor filled project that hangs on a radio tower on the island nation of Curacao. Curacao is a desert island 1 2 degrees north of the equator in the Caribbean. Part 6 in the fall will show the upgraded sensor suite and replacement of the wind turbine.
John Shovic Guest Writer
temperature sensor (naturally the most expensive sensor in the box), pulling the wires off, it survived.
Project Curacao is designed to monitor the local environment unattended for six months. It operates on solar power cells and communicates with the designer via an iPad App called RasPiConnect. All aspects of this project are designed to be monitored and updated remotely (with the current exception of the Arduino Battery Watchdog).
System description Project Curacao consists of four subsystems. A Raspberry Pi Model A is the brains and the overall controller. The Power Subsystem was described in part 1 , the Environmental Sensor Subsystem in part 2 and the Camera Subsystem was shown in part 3. Part 4 described the software running the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino Battery Watchdog.
Results of shipping The box arrived in our luggage on March 3, 201 4. Airport security (TSA) inspected the box twice, but aside from picking up the box with the outside
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One of the key things to remember about shipping a piece of equipment through airport security is to take out the batteries and put them in your carry on luggage. The other item is to make sure you provide a written explanation of what it is and what it does with the box in the luggage. We wrote a short letter about Project Curacao and included reprints of the MagPi series of articles. The temperature sensor was fixable. There were also a couple of loose grounds to be tightened. A group of sensors were giving odd readings so I knew to look for a loose ground. One bad sensor might be the sensor, where-as a bad group of sensors was likely a ground or power.