Building an Environmental Sensor Network for Chemical Synthesis

• Siddhi Patil, Electrical Engineering, University of Delaware

• Jessica Sampson, Chemistry, University of Delaware

The High Throughput Experimentation Facility at the University of Delaware is eager to understand how environmental variables (e.g. humidity, temperature, pressure, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and ambient light) affect various aspects of chemical reactions. The aim of our project is to build a sensor network for the HTEF lab which collects environmental data and reports it to a database, so that the experimenter can refer back to it and make accurate, relevant, data supported conclusions. To create the sensor network we used several Raspberry Pi 5s, a KAMRUI Mini PC to serve as the host computer, Pi Sense Hats, and Dracal CO2 sensors for the hardware. Each sensor is calibrated and controlled via a python program, making particular use of the SenseHat library, a python library specially made to work with the Raspberry Pi and Sense Hat. To ensure efficient and user-friendly storage of sensor data, we relied on PostgresSQL. We installed it on the main host server computer, as well as on each raspberry pi so data can be stored locally and consolidated in the central hub. A special feature of this sensor network is that the frequency of data storage is designed to change based on the stability of the environmental data from the sensors, so the storage space (SD cards) are used in the most efficient way possible. We were in fact able to successfully assemble the sensor network we envisioned, and we hope to integrate future lab sensors into this network as well.