Industrial WSN node extension and measurement systems for air, water and environmental monitoring: IoT enabled environment monitoring using NI WSN nodes

Air and Water are the most important resources of the planet that we use daily for sustaining life. Air quality affects all living creatures, from trees and plants to animals and people. Air quality, especially in the trend of more industrialized cities and with a rapid growing population of cars, is degrading. Continuous monitoring allows the national administrations to take measures in order to reduce pollution and toxic compounds in the air and prevent further degrading of the air quality. From drinking and producing electricity in hydroelectric power plants to cooling nuclear reactors, water is one of the most common substances that we must manage. In flood management applications, hydroelectric dams, city water infrastructure, and other environmental monitoring applications the high distance between measurement points determine engineers and scientists to use autonomous low power wireless data acquisition systems that are independent on a permanent power supply. In this paper the authors present a flexible low power extension board designed around NI WSN analog input nodes that allows connection of different output type sensors (even digital sensors) to be monitored with one WSN node.