Envco – Environmental Equipment

In many monitoring applications, the ideal placements of the datalogger and the sensors are not coincident. An example of this is an application that monitors water quality and flow in a river channel. One site on the river might be ideal for water quality, but the ideal site at which to measure flow might be several kilometers distant. Such a situation requires either multiple dataloggers, which are typically expensive to purchase and maintain; or an RF link between the sites.

The Scienterra ProLink Radio transfers SDI-12 commands and data between sites, via RF link.

Sensors, dataloggers and/or radios can be hot-swapped, added, or removed from the network without altering the functionality of the system in any way. There is no configuration necessary for specific sensors or dataloggers, and only limited configuration is necessary for each radio. The network will function seamlessly with any equipment that is compliant to SDI-12 protocol.

In the time intervals between data points, when no radio communication is expected, the radio frequency (RF) section of the ProLink Radio is turned off. This reduces power consumption by more than 75%, and allows the system to be powered by small solar collectors where power use is an issue.