Bring a real place into the living lab. A school yard, a community garden, a window box, a stretch of shore. If it has weather and life, it can be a site, and it can join the map.
A site is any real place you care for, fitted with a simple solar-powered kit that reads water, humidity, light and soil, and connected so its readings stream onto the network's live dashboard. From the day it connects, your place has its own page of open data, and you are doing exactly the same science as DANÚ and ATU.
A living outdoor classroom and real data for science and maths.
Add a measuring layer to a place people already tend together.
Build the kit, mind the site, watch the seasons turn in numbers.
A greenhouse, an allotment, a back garden. One curious person is enough.
The template runs on a solar-powered set of sensors based on the prototype built by ATU's physics department. This design has been developed in collaboration with Dr Mossy Kelly and his students in the ATU Physics Department. The full bill of materials, with exact parts and wiring, is published as an open blueprint once the template build is finished this summer. These are the typical components.
A small solar panel, a rechargeable battery and a charge controller, so a site runs without mains power.
A soil-moisture probe reading how much water is in the ground.
An air temperature and humidity sensor for the growing conditions.
A light-level sensor following the day, the season and the shade.
The newest addition, reading soil condition such as conductivity or nutrients.
A low-cost microcontroller that reads the sensors and sends the data, in a weatherproof box.
These figures are indicative, not a quote. The exact cost depends on the soil sensor you choose and where you buy. The open blueprint will carry the confirmed bill of materials, and we will keep a low-cost build that schools can manage. There is no charge to be on the network and no subscription: the dashboard and the data are free and open. Where we can, we will help groups source or part-fund a kit.
Tell us about your place using the form below. There is no commitment in a first conversation.
We share the open build guide and help you put the kit together, or point you to a ready one.
Set it up in your spot and point its feed at the network using the simple open data format.
Your site appears on the live dashboard with its own page of open readings, alongside the others.
A few lines is plenty. We will come back to you about joining the network.
or email us directly at etain.kiely@atu.ie