Week 6: The Waiting Game…

On Monday, Dr. Habeeb discovered that the order for the HOBO environmental monitoring units had not made it’s way out of IU Purchasing. (Note to future self, the end of June is the end of the fiscal year for IU and many other universities…beware of ordering items at that time!) So, we finally received notification on Tuesday morning that the Purchase Order had been approved and submitted to Onset.  I called my contact at Onset and Eileen got the wheels rolling on her end.  Although they usually predict that orders will take 1 to 2 weeks to ship once they are received by the company, they have our order slated to ship out next Monday.

Meanwhile, while I am waiting for the delivery of the HOBO stations, I am working on learning HOBOware, HOBOlink, and HOBOmobile; the software systems that we will be using to access and download the data from our sensors.

I am also working to design a mounting system that will have the necessary stability, but will protect the cables and sensors from weather, rodents, and tampering and be as aesthetically pleasing as possible.  I spent some time at Menards, brainstorming with several of their employees.  Some suggestions were ruled out as impractical, but folks in the fencing department had some good ideas:

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And there were more options presented in the plumbing department:

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Dr. Habeeb likes the idea of mounting the sensors on posts similar to what we saw in the Community Orchard, so I will investigate these mounting spikes further:

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Speaking of mounting the systems, I laser cut a cardboard prototype of the RX3000, so I can work with it to test mounting options.

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On Wednesday, Dr. Habeeb, Dr. Clawson, and I had a meeting at Bloomington Community Orchard with a volunteer named Dani.  The orchard is completely run by volunteers, and everything produced in the orchard is available to anyone.  Interesting place!  Mounting a sensor at the orchard would provide valuable data to assess the effect that different types of vegetation are having on microclimates.  Dani seemed very receptive to having a sensor station installed at the orchard, and promised to present the possibility to the Board on Thursday at their meeting.

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The pole that we selected to mount the equipment. (Dr. Dana Habeeb in the foreground, Dr. James Clawson in the back)

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This is the diagram of the monitoring station that I prepared for the Bloomington Community Orchard’s Board meeting, showing the proposed lay-out of the equipment.  Since they have such tall posts that we can mount to, this will perhaps be our easiest installation.  The temperature sensor (enclosed in a solar radiation shield) will be mounted at 6 feet (to capture near-surface air temperature).  The solar panel will be mounted on the southern side of the pole (facing away from the orchard’s entrance) to capture as much solar radiation as possible, and the data logger will be mounted between the two units. It will require use of a ladder to mount the equipment, but once mounted, it should not be within easy tamper range.

On Friday, at our weekly meeting, fellow REU member Ray had everyone wear their backpacks on the front of their body, walk around the building, and use our cellphones with one hand, simulating new parents walking with a baby.  It was a very creative visualization, and hopefully Ray found our feedback to be helpful!

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Here is a link to my updated website.  All of the initial “place holder” text has been removed and all content is now my own.  I will look forward to linking my research to the website once it reaches a “publishable” stage (https://www.susanmonsey.com).

Publication venues:  At this point, I do not know if there is a plan to publish information discovered during this “pilot study” part of the project.  Once the sensor network has been established and a sufficient amount of data has been collected, then publication options can be discussed.  Kiarra and I are working to document everything in our paper and in our blogs, but I do not know when or where Dr. Habeeb plans to publish any information.  That will need to remain a topic of conversation for next week’s meeting.  This week’s meeting was primarily focused on meeting with Danny Vu, the graduate student who is building the project’s website and the database that will store all of the data.  Dr. Habeeb has requested server space to house both the data and the website, but we have no word on the official location yet.

The revised Reviewer Response Table can be found here.