At a glance#
Skills: electronic prototyping, soldering, Python
- What: Designed and built a low-cost solar-powered device to measure carbon cycling.
- How: Prototyped and refined electronic design through breadboard testing and final soldered assembly. Programmed ESP32 microcontroller firmware with MicroPython.
- Why: Developed to be a low-cost open-source alternative to expensive commercial equipment used to measure carbon flux cycles in scientific research. Published project relied upon depreciated electronic components, prompting me to adapt the design.
Details#
Resources#
This project was closely inspired by the research paper, “Fluxbots: A Method for Building, Deploying, Collecting and Analyzing Data From an Array of Inexpensive, Autonomous Soil Carbon Flux Chambers”, Elizabeth Forbes et al. (June 2023). The paper and accompanying source code were extremely useful throughout the design.