Introduction
When much of the Victoria Regional History Center's archives moved to a storage facility off campus, we wanted a way to be able to monitor the space's temperature and humidity remotely. We wanted our monitor to meet 3 conditions...
- The Raspberry Pi had to be able to accurate gauge both the temperature and humidity of the room
- The data retrieved needed to be available remotely
- The Special Collections Librarian would receive an alert if either the temperature or humidity exceeded archival standards
What's needed
A list of parts we used to build our humidity monitor. You can purchase the parts separately or in a kit.
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Raspberry Pi 3 B+Other models would probably work just as well
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Raspberry Pi 3 B+ CaseIf the Raspberry Pi does not come with a case so you'll need to purchase (or 3D print) one separately
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Raspberry Pi Power cordPower cords generally don't come with the Raspberry Pi itself so unless you bought a kit, you'll need to purchase one of these separately
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microSD CardThe microSD card will hold the Raspberry Pi's operating system and software
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microSD Card ReaderUnless your microSD card comes with a version of the Raspberry Pi Operating System pre-installed, you'll need to briefly connect it to a PC
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BME280 Environmental SensorThis is the sensor module we used which can detect temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure
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ThingSpeak AccountThe Internet of Things (IoT) service that the Pi will upload its data to. We used the non-commercial, free version
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balenaEtcherbalenaEtcher is free software used to install Operating Systems on SD cards.
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Raspberry Pi Operating SystemThere are a variety of operating systems you can install on your raspberry pi, we chose the basic (free) Raspberry Pi OS.