FreeStation and //Smart: Self Paced Training

Description

A FreeStation is an open-source, internet-connected environmental monitoring station built from low-cost sensors and a microcontroller. It is designed as a turnkey system: something that can be assembled and deployed cheaply enough to place many of them, so that the effectiveness of an intervention is measured across a site rather than sampled at one point.

The //Smart: tools sit on top of that hardware. //Smart:River monitors in-line storage — leaky dams and retention ponds — by measuring river stage on either side of the structure. //Smart:Soil monitors soil water storage using sensors at one or two depths, typically 30 and 60 centimetres, alongside local measurements of rainfall, temperature, humidity and air pressure, and is used to assess land management interventions such as conservation agriculture against a counterfactual.

The training is self-paced and covers the whole chain: the sensor designs, building a station, the firmware that reads the sensors and transmits their data at user-defined intervals, the server software that stores and quality-controls the data, and the analysis functions specific to natural flood management. Because the design is open, the material can be followed by a catchment group, a landowner or a water company without a commercial relationship to the equipment.

What the training covers

Building and configuring a FreeStation, including the sensor options and the choice between a live station that reports in near real time and a local station that logs. Flashing and setting up the firmware, and understanding the quality control it applies to the data on the device. Deploying a pair of stations to measure a difference — upstream and downstream of a leaky dam, or intervention against counterfactual across a field boundary. Reading and filtering the data in the web panel, which provides line and scatter charts over a day, a week, a month or a year, with automatic filtering of out-of-bounds readings and implausible spikes. Using the natural-flood-management analysis functions to convert the measurements into a volume of additional storage, and expressing that as a proportion of the flow at the downstream asset of interest.

How it is delivered

Online, self-paced, as a set of instructional videos and written guidance, with the hardware documentation, firmware and server software available from the project websites. The material includes the laboratory flume work carried out to compare the performance of different leaky dam designs, which is the reference for choosing a design rather than a recipe for one.

Who it is for

Community groups, catchment partnerships and landowners who want to demonstrate what their interventions are achieving; water companies and flood authorities who need performance evidence; local authorities; and researchers and students working on natural flood management.