Co2 sensors in fields

Posting this on behalf of @kanedan29 cause it’s probably a good question for @chrowe and @donblair but I’ll add my two cents also -->

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I’ve got a quick question for you. Have either of you ever developed a field-deployable soil CO2 flux logger using arduino and the sensors that are available on SparkFun? My advisor and I are talking about doing something like that in a proposal. My sense is it’s possible, but we’d have to solve some issues to create usable flux chambers.
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I have a nice co2 sensor, 0 - 10k ppm with nice resolution and intended for continuous operation (we use the K-20, but also used the Sensair S8 with success in the past). Both have clear and nice arduino libraries which we use and are fairly easy to get started with.

There are many ways to set it up depending on how you want to interact with it, but a good possible way for infrequent monitoring would be something like the Particle boards with SIM cards, even using their own mesh system which connects units up to 50 feet away to each other to get more spacial variety within a field while maintaining only a single gateway (cell phone connection)… I think Particle is also well designed for applications where wake up, measure, shut down low power type applications are required.

That’s probably where I’d start.

Thanks @gbathree. That’s a great place to start. Good to know that devices and associated Arduino libraries are easy to get started with. The secondary question is about how to set them up in the field. I think hacking together an eddy covariance tower would be pretty tough and would require additional modules for windspeed and humidity. The other possibility is some kind of automated flux chamber that closes on a time interval, takes CO2 measurements in a closed headspace and then pushes the data. Curious if anyone has toyed with how to tackle the physical components of doing these measurements.

PS you can make these out of coconuts… of course Marc Dussalier did it see link -->