| Description |
Many fields of research require the ability to accurately measure ambient air temperature. This task is complicated due to solar radiation which heats the sensor and causes it to record a higher temperature than is accurate. The traditional way to protect against this kind of interference is to have a radiation shield like the one depicted below, with the sensor housed inside layered shelves of material. However, as the schematic shows, solar radiation can still penetrate the shield and cause significant error in the measurements (Thomas & Smoot, 2013 and Gunawardena, 2018). To better mitigate the solar radiation effect, there needs to be a way to mechanically aspirate the sensor. In other words, a fan is needed to pull outside air over the sensor to allow it to record ambient air temperature accurately. Such aspiration units, used instead of the radiation shield, are available to buy commercially, though they are expensive and may have difficulty integrating with existing hardware and software, as is the case with the LEMS devices. The LEMS are low-cost energy management systems developed at the University of Utah as miniature data loggers (Gunawardena, 2018). They are composed of custom-made circuit boards (PCBs) that have many ports for sensors. This project is focused on developing a custom aspiration unit for use on these LEMS devices. |
