What is Sensorpedia without sensors? This article will be one of a series that detail how to talk to a few different types of sensors, calibrate their data, and interface them with Sensorpedia.

These are the sensors we will be connecting (this guide will focus on reading the LM34 analog temperature sensor):

• Irradiance (digital)
• Relative Humidity and Temperature (digital)
• Temperature (analog)
• Barometric Pressure (digital)
• Light Color (digital)
• Distance (digital)

One of the preferred data formats for Sensorpedia is GeoRSS.  Simply put, a GeoRSS feed contains entries of data readings tagged with a specific time and spatial location. We can serve RSS or GeoRSS feeds to Sensorpedia, but first we need to have data to display in the feed.  Since we can’t plug little sensor PCBs straight into the back of a server, we will need a bit of infrastructure to calibrate and relay the data.  An ARM microcontroller board designed for the DIY/tinkering crowd called the Make Controller (henceforth referred to as “MC”) will serve as a middleman and communicate with a host server computer and the various sensors. It can poll analog sensors, digital sensors, control TTL, communicate via USB and Ethernet, and even control servos. The MC is a powerful little device.

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