Coursework · E4 Engineering Design
Logger and Sensor Enclosure
Cases for a plant sensor and its data logger, built for a professor studying how desert plants in Claremont handle water.
- Course
- E4, Harvey Mudd
- Client
- HMC professor studying desert plants
- Instrument
- ICT PSY-1 Psychrometer
- Made
- Sensor and logger enclosures
The client
Our client was a Harvey Mudd professor who studies desert plants. They use an ICT PSY-1 psychrometer to measure how much water plants around Claremont are holding.
The problem
The sensor clamps onto a plant’s stem and measures vapor pressure in a tiny chamber, so it needs to stay stable. Out in the desert it has to survive bumps, rain, heat, and curious animals.
It’s wired to a logger that saves everything to an SD card. Heat and water can wreck the electronics, and heat can even break down the battery circuits, so the logger needs protecting just as much. A sensor is pretty useless if you lose the data.
What it had to do
The logger hangs on a branch or a t-post, and the professor has to be able to open it easily to swap the SD card. With both parts protected, they can trust the data and focus on how the plants are adapting to a changing climate.