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Alaska Datalogger

Alaska is on the edge of advancing climate change. Its unique position of having a fairly untouched landscape populated with a variety of coal mine canaries enables a lot of research possibilities. Our friend Monty is an Archaeologist who helps with camps for kids in Native Villages scattered around the state—Culturalalaska.com. He has been building cache sites for the historical preservation of food with these kids and wanted a way of temperature monitoring that he could leave for about 8 months of winter. A food cache in Alaska is designed to prevent Bear entry and can either be buried or secured in a small cabin-like structure on poles. Unfortunately the warming of the climate makes many of these handy refrigerator designs more like a microwave this summer—honestly its really hot up here! There are a lot of commercial datalogging machines out there but Alaska needed its own DIY brand: Waterproof, Two waterproof sensors on long lines that could be within the cache and another to lay on the surface, Something buildable for kids with a STEM program, Minimal maintenance, Long term battery, Easy download from SD card, 3D printable, rechargeable, Real time Clock, and cheap.
The design is totally printable with any 3D printer and I have done the design for the PCB that you can order and populate with easy to obtain components. The battery is generic 18650 that should last a year or so with 12x/day readings and charging is done by just plugging in some power for a day. It is designed(Fusion 360) around the O-ring that is used in house water purifiers so it is easy to obtain and with silicon grease and tightening of the well placed bolts should provide protection for the Alaska winter if it comes this year….”

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