ETNA RADIO OBSERVATORY
Live data from SAN GREGORIO (CT), Etna Park, Sicily
Maintained by ERO team
A new experience with ST sensors and development boards. This time it was the turn of LoRa technology that allows the remote transmission of small information. Together with the INGV of Catania and the University of Catania, and thanks to the willingness and collaboration of the Director of the Integral Nature Reserve "Complesso Immacolatelle e Micio Conti," in San Gregorio, I installed a solar-powered system to detect environmental parameters and vibrations inside a lava flow cave, where colonies of bats have been observed over time. The idea is to track over time the climate trends inside the cave, at various points including the outer mouth, and any ground movements, and have them online in real time. Coupled with the ASTRA-1B and STM32 Nucleo pack LoRa™ HF band sensor and gateway kits, there is an ultrasound recorder, calibrated for bat transmission frequencies. The process is minimally invasive and does not require human presence inside the cavity. Data collection will take place for the biennium 2024-2025. I am very happy about this! Rosario Catania
System 1: STM32 Nucleo pack LoRa™ HF band
The P-NUCLEO-LRWAN2 STM32 Nucleo starter pack for LoRa® technology and high-performance (G)FSK/OOK/(G)MSK modulations is a development tool to learn and quickly develop low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) solutions. The pack contains both an LPWAN end-node and its related gateway. It is compatible with various LoRaWAN® network server providers. P-NUCLEO-LRWAN2 is intended for countries granting radio-communications access in frequency bands higher than 800 MHz. On the gateway side, the NUCLEO-F746ZG board, based on a high-performance STM32F7 Arm® 32-bit microcontroller, controls a RisingHF ARDUINO® expansion board (LRWAN_GS_HF1) used as a basic LoRaWAN® packet forwarder. In that way, data coming from the development node can reach LoRaWAN® network servers directly. On the sensor-node side, the NUCLEO-L073RZ, based on an ultra-low-power STM32L0 Arm® 32-bit microcontroller, controls a USI® I-NUCLEO-LRWAN1 ARDUINO® expansion board used as a sensor node. The I-NUCLEO-LRWAN1 end-node is an ARDUINO® compatible expansion board. This board is designed by USI® around a LoRa® module powered by an STM32L05 device hosting a friendly AT command stack. This makes user development and access to the LoRa® technology easier. In addition, this expansion board features several sensors from STMicroelectronics: accelerometer and gyroscope (LSM303AGR), MEMS pressure (LPS22HB), and humidity and temperature (HTS221). (source www.st.com)
STM32 Nucleo pack LoRa™ HF band - credits: ERO
ASTRA-1B LoRa™ HF band - credits: ERO
ERO, STMicroelectronics, INGV collaboration- credits: ERO
System 2: Ultrasonic sensor with datalogger
ARDUBAT (http://home.earthlink.net/~bat-detector/ArduBat/) is a project developed for multiple purposes. It could be used to develop a bat alarm or a video camera that is activated when bats are nearby. Or you can use it to record the date and time the bats are active. But in ERO-ELL we use it both for monitoring bats but in general for receiving and decoding ultrasonic signals. The stack created by ERO uses the ARDUBAT circuit, a card for datalogging on SD memory, and an ARDUINO UNO R3 prototype card. The system acquires ultrasound at the bats' emission frequencies, records on SD card and transmits data via serial port to be available online at any time.
ERO Ultrasonic sensor with datalogger - credits: www.etna-ero.it