SenCell: A Modular Cellular Sensory Acquisition System

The objective of this project is to design a cellular enabled and modular system that can monitor conditions of its surrounding environment and relay that data to an end user. A system such as this is applicable for general purpose telemetry that can be used for monitoring of microclimates, water quality, tank levels, security, just to name a few. The applications are endless. This system will consist of two basic nodes: (1) a sensory node that is placed into the field to gather data and (2) an internet enabled central server which collects sensor data from the sensory nodes for the user. The sensory nodes will communicate with the server using the GSM/GPRS cellular network. Using a PIC microcontroller and a GSM/GPRS modem, the sensory node will have the ability to send collected information to the remote server for analysis by the end user. Data will be made available to the user in the form of a comma separated value (CSV) file, containing both timestamps and data parameters for each sensory node. This system is especially interesting for autonomously collecting and aggregating environmental data for study in the areas of biology, ecology, meteorology, geology, and environment sciences. Thus, this system allows for scientists to focus on the research of their interest, rather than data collection.