Wireless Data Acquisition System for Greenhouses

This chapter presents a novel wireless data acquisition system. The system has been designed to take advantage of inexpensive robotics systems like Lego NXT, which establishes a new paradigm in the wireless ad-hoc networks field. The system architecture can record data from different variables in greenhouse environments. These wireless systems employ wireless access points (WAPs) and wireless-fidelity (Wi-Fi) adapter modules for data acquisition that sample the environment. The measurements data are transmitted to a central station or inclusive to another different node. The acquisition system was designed and adapted to be used in greenhouses located in Quintana Roo, Mexico, where the typical relevant variables are temperature, luminosity and humidity. The developed system uses virtual instrumentation to measure and record environmental variables. The proposed implementation uses commercial data acquisition boards and sensors to gather data, which are processed and visualized with the LabVIEW-based software.