A rugged Alaska temperature monitor #Sensors #3DPrinting #Alaska @Instructables @Hackaday

Instructables rabbitcreek posts about building rugged temperature monitors for food cache sites in Alaska.

Our friend Monty is an Archaeologist who helps with camps for kids in Native Villages scattered around the state–Culturalalaska.com. He has been building cache sites for the historical preservation of food with these kids and wanted a way of temperature monitoring that he could leave for about 8 months of winter. A food cache in Alaska is designed to prevent Bear entry and can either be buried or secured in a small cabin-like structure on poles.

Unfortunately the warming of the climate makes many of these handy refrigerator designs more like a microwave this summer–honestly it’s really hot up here! There are a lot of commercial datalogging machines out there but Alaska needed its own DIY brand: Waterproof, Two waterproof sensors on long lines that could be within the cache and another to lay on the surface, Something buildable for kids with a STEM program, Minimal maintenance, Long term battery, Easy download from SD card, 3D printable, rechargeable, Real time Clock, and cheap.

The design uses several Adafruit parts to accomplish the mission:

• Adafruit DS3231 Precision RTC Breakout [ADA3013] $14
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  Adafruit TPL5111 Low Power Timer Breakout [ADA3573] $5

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  Adafruit Feather 32u4 Adalogger $22 [ADA2795] You can also use the M0 version but the battery level line is on a different pin and you must change it in the software.

See this Hackaday article and all the build instructions on Instructables. Great project!!