Specifications

Fig. 6.1: Final DataManager product with enclosure actively measuring precipitation and

soil water content at a USU test site.

devices support SDI-12, analog, and digital sensors. The devices also support using SD

cards for memory storage. The batteries for this system will last a year without external

power. Solar panels or other forms of external power are also supported. The ZigBee radios

embedded in this product are easy to enable and use. The energy required for management

support of a large network of loggers has been signiﬁcantly reduced. These properties allow

people with a n on-technical background to easily setup and operate this system. All in all,

here is a device th at can supply the research and the agricultural communities with a tool

in which new research or monitoring opportunities can be realized.

6.3 Recommendations and Fut ure Work

The research and development of this thesis project has left the project with two

foreseeable venues for more research . First, new remote hardware units using the beta

hardware will be developed. Th e remotes will be ZigBee Endnodes and have a feature

set that is a subset if th is development, making it possible for the remote’s ﬁrmware to