Wireless sensor node - enclosures (10)

I now have all of the basic hardware prepared to allow me to deploy my wireless sensor network. However, I still need to work out the best way to package the various parts.

I have ordered a couple of plastic boxes which I am planning to use to package my nodes. In particular, I want a plastic box to put my base station in so that I can screw down the usb breakout board. One of the boxes should be a perfect size to contain the base station. The smaller box will contain a wireless sensor node.

However, in the mean time I decided to try my hand at making a cheaper enclosure out of some red cardboard which I already had at home. I drew the following template using Inkscape.

The source svg file is available here. The only joint which requires glue is the tab on the left. The top and bottom are designed to be folded in on themselves without glue.

I was quite pleased with the results.

This is now sitting on top of my kitchen cupboard broadcasting the temperature every 5 minutes. I don't have my base station setup yet but since the sensor node has an expected battery life of over a year I have plenty of time to deploy the base station!

There are two main next steps:

• Sort out the base station enclosure.
• Write more code on the base station to log a history of readings, spot when readings are missing and expose this information over the serial port.