Tools for DIY site-testing

摘要

Our group has designed, sourced and constructed a radiosonde/ground-station pair using inexpensive opensourcehardware. Based on the Arduino platform, the easy to build radiosonde allows the atmospheric sciencecommunity to test and deploy instrumentation packages that can be fully customized to their individual sensingrequirements. This sensing/transmitter package has been successfully deployed on a tethered-balloon, a weatherballoon, a UAV airplane, and is currently being integrated into a UAV quadcopter and a student-built rocket.In this paper, the system, field measurements and potential applications will be described. As will the sciencedrivers of having full control and open access to a measurement system in an age when commercial solutionshave become popular but are restrictive in terms of proprietary sensor specifications, “black-box” calibrationoperations or data handling routines, etc. The ability to modify and experiment with both the hardware andsoftware tools is an essential part of the scientific process. Without an understanding of the intrinsic biases orlimitations in your instruments and system, it becomes difficult to improve them or advance the knowledge inany given field.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.