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Anatomy of an Environmental Monitoring Station

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About This MicroSim

Most readers of Chapter 1 have never seen one of these up close. This is the orientation diagram, and it is the picture the rest of the book fills in.

Eleven components are marked on a side view of a small station on a post. Each marker names the part, says what quantity it measures, and points at the chapter that covers it properly:

Component Chapter
Enclosure, solar panel, battery, cellular antenna 16
Single-board computer 3
GPS antenna 5
BME280 sensor, radiation shield 6, 7, 8
Solar radiation sensor 9
Anemometer 10
Accelerometer 11

The radiation shield is worth stopping on. Those white louvres are not decoration: without them the station measures the sun rather than the air.

Markers you have opened stay ticked, so the panel doubles as a checklist - the counter reads explored N of 11. The station is drawn with p5 primitives rather than a photograph, so it stays sharp at any width and has no external image to load.

How to Use

  • Hover a marker to highlight the component and see its name.
  • Click a marker to open its infobox: what it is, what it measures, and where in the book it is covered.
  • Tick Show all labels if you would rather see the whole map at once before exploring.
  • Reset clears the explored ticks so a second learner can start clean.
  • Aim to reach explored 11 of 11.

Iframe Embed Code

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

<iframe src="https://iowerx.github.io/pi-env-monitor/sims/monitoring-station-anatomy/main.html"
        height="562px"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Grade Level

6-12

Duration

10-15 minutes

Bloom's Taxonomy Level

Remember (L1)

Prerequisites

  • No prior knowledge required

Activities

  1. Overview (3 min): Turn on Show all labels and read the whole station at once. Do not click anything yet.
  2. Exploration (7 min): Turn the labels off and click every marker until the counter reads 11 of 11. For each one, say the measured quantity out loud before reading the infobox.
  3. Recall (4 min): Press Reset, cover the screen, and list as many of the eleven components as you can from memory along with what each measures.

Assessment

  • Names all eleven components and the quantity each one measures.
  • Explains why the thermometer needs a radiation shield.
  • Identifies which components are about power and communications rather than sensing.

References

  1. WMO-No. 8, Guide to Instruments and Methods of Observation - siting and exposure standards for each instrument shown here.
  2. NOAA National Weather Service: Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) - the professional version of this station.
  3. Bosch Sensortec BME280 datasheet - the one chip behind Chapters 6, 7 and 8.
  4. Wikipedia: Stevenson screen - the classic radiation shield.