How to create a portable environmental monitoring kit for fieldwork?

Dracal sensors are powered by the USB port and consume very little, which makes a field kit easy to build:

  • One or more sensors suited to your measurements, for example a PTH450 for temperature, humidity and pressure, or a thermocouple adapter for surface temperatures
  • A laptop with DracalView (free), or a Raspberry Pi running our command line tools if you want something smaller
  • A power bank to extend your laptop's autonomy
  • To read several sensors without a laptop, a SensGate: it logs on its own and you can retrieve the data afterwards. It needs a power source (12 V adapter or Power over Ethernet).
  • An ISO/IEC 17025 traceable certificate if your field measurements must be traceable

Keep in mind that our sensors are not battery-powered data loggers: they must stay connected to a computer to record (see why). For an example of measurements taken outside the lab, read our case study on field-deployed utility meter test equipment.

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