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Feb 23

Are Arduinos Practical and Cost Effective?

Last spring my daughter, Sarah, needed a project for the science fair, and since she has always been interested in scientific measurements, we decided to try and figure out when it was time to water her mother’s plants. Since we’ve fielded a lot of calls from customers asking about using Arduinos (user-programmable microprocessors) lately, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and give one a try. My preference would have been the speed and simplicity of a METER data logger, but I was curious about how practical and cost-effective this method might be for taking measurements.

Young Girl Concentrating on Helping with the Soldering

Arduino Science Project with my daughter

The Arduino is an inexpensive, user-programmable microprocessor on a circuit board that has exposed analog inputs for measuring voltages and digital ports for measuring incoming digital signals. It can also run displays and is programmed by an Arduino IDE running on your computer.

I purchased a book called Arduino Recipes that taught us the basics of Arduino programming, which was pretty straightforward. The Arduino board itself has rows of pinheaders, so I brought some of the male pinheaders from work and soldered all the wires to them, in preparation to attach the water content sensor. It looked medusa-like with all the wires coming off the pinheaders, but we could then just hook up kid-friendly snap circuits and try some elementary tests to get used to the system.

We hooked up Decagon’s (now METER) analog water content sensor (EC5) first and started measuring. It has a really nice calibration equation supplied by METER, so we used that for a while to measure water content. We took one of mom’s dry plants and measured before and after watering and used the readings to make a linear relationship between the reading on the sensor when it was dry and the reading on the sensor when it was wet.

Our biggest challenge was that Sarah wanted to display this to mom to make sure she knew when to water the plants. So she and I then had to figure out how to integrate an LCD display.

Sarah was excited to get the digital soil moisture sensor integrated because we could then measure water content AND electrical conductivity (EC) to get an idea of the fertilizer in the soil. We used my work colleague’s code to read the digital sensor output, which worked quite well. It only took a few minutes to insert his piece in the code into our program and start reading water content. Our biggest challenge was that Sarah wanted to display this to mom to make sure she knew when to water the plants. So she and I then had to figure out how to integrate an LCD display. Luckily, all the details were on the Arduino website. We just cut and pasted the code into our program and then did all the wiring.

Finally, we had it all put together, and we inserted the 5TE digital sensor into the pot. It worked, but the device was large and unwieldy. Mom wasn’t happy that we were putting it right in the middle of her clean living room, but Sarah pointed out that we have to make sacrifices for science, so we put the sensors in the soil, set up the display, and ran it for about a week. Sarah took water content data morning and night and watered it when it reached our “dry” point. She took the finished system to the science fair and was excited to find a few future customers.

The biggest challenge would be all the details in the system. We’d need a circuit board, a power supply, a data logging interface board, and a box to put it in, and if we were going to set it outside, that box would have to be waterproof.

Are Arduinos practical for use in your experiments?

It depends. Sarah and I found out that it just doesn’t take a lot to integrate a sensor into the Arduino system and be able to make measurements. However, if we were to try the above experiment long-term, the biggest challenge would be all the details in the system. We’d need a circuit board, a power supply, a data logging interface board, and a box to put it in, and if we were going to set it outside, that box would have to be waterproof. We’d also need ways to connect the sensor to the circuitry, and all these things take time and resources. For me, the take-home message was that Arduinos are a lot of fun, and might fit your application exactly the way you want. However, you’ll need time (often a lot of it) to spend making sure it’s waterproof, doing all the programming, writing a code durable enough to fit your field applications, and getting the hardware prepped. In fact, Decagon support staff take calls every week from frustrated do-it-yourselfers who’ve found this is not as easy as it seems. Thus, in my opinion, an EM50 or Campbell Scientific data logger are more practical options than an Arduino-like microprocessor.

Are Arduinos cost effective?

A lot of scientists want to make measurements out in the field with small budgets. I am certainly one of those. Arduinos are $85 versus a complete data logger that costs several hundred dollars. However, people tend to forget that things like labor even cost discrepancies.

So, if you have plenty of time, want the versatility, and you love this stuff, go ahead and make an Arduino sensor, but at the end of the day, the cost shouldn’t be a driver, because there are data loggers that can do the job of an Arduino more simply and quickly, without all the hassle.

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Feb 17

4 Funding Tips from an Experienced Grant Writer

Dr. Richard Gill developed an interest in ecology as a child while exploring the forests and seashores of Washington State. This attraction to wild places motivated Dr. Gill to study Conservation Biology as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University and to receive a PhD in Ecology from Colorado State University.

Dr. Richard Gill, ecologist at BYU

His PhD research on plant-soil interactions in dryland ecosystems, supervised by Indy Burke, dovetailed well with his postdoctoral research on plant physiological ecology with Rob Jackson at Duke University. Dr. Gill returned home to Washington in his first faculty position at Washington State University. There he pursued research on global change ecology, studying the impacts of changes in atmospheric CO2, temperature, and drought. In 2008 he joined the faculty of Brigham Young University as an associate professor of biology. He teaches Conservation Biology courses and in the general and honors education curriculum.

Dr. Gill has been successful in obtaining funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Dept of Energy, and the U.S. Department of the Interior. He also helped guide one of his graduate students in winning research instrumentation from the Grant Harris Fellowship, provided by METER. We interviewed him about his thoughts on successful grant writing. Here’s what he had to say:

Understand the call: I think it’s important to understand what’s being asked of you and write to the call for proposals itself. We all have ideas, and we think everybody should give us money for every idea that we have. That’s part of being a scientist, but understanding the parameters and the purpose of the grant is crucial. This is because the easiest way to eliminate proposals is to cull those that don’t address the call. In this way, proposal readers go from a stack of 200 to a stack of 50, without having to get into the details of the research at all. So my advice is to read the call for proposals, and make sure you actually address what they ask for and stick to the requirements for length and format.
Be true to the vision: There is always some sort of vision tied to the call, so make sure you are true to that vision. For example, let’s say it’s the Grant Harris Fellowship, which provides instrumentation for early career students to do something they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. Make sure you say, “Here’s what I’m already doing with the funding and instrumentation that we have in our lab. There’s a key component missing, and I can only do it if you support me.” Show a clear need, aligning your research with the purpose of the proposal, and you’ll have a strong case for funding.
Make sure you edit: Many proposals don’t get funded because of poor writing. Your great ideas can’t come forward if the reader is mired down in your verbiage. Don’t send them your first draft. Make sure you have somebody read it for clarity.
Be clear and concise: When scientists are involved in a project, it is common to develop a sort of tunnel vision, a byproduct of having worked on the project for years and being familiar with all the details. When you write a proposal you should remember that the person who is reading is going to be intelligent, but have no idea what you’ve been doing. You should say, “Here’s what I’m going to study, why I’m going to study it, and how I’m going to test it.” Be clear, specific, and declarative.

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Feb 11

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Founders of Environmental Biophysics Series: John Monteith

We interviewed Gaylon Campbell, Ph.D. about his association with one of the fathers of environmental biophysics, John Monteith.

John Lennox Monteith, image:agrometeorology.org

Who was John Monteith?

John Monteith was a professor at the University of Nottingham in England and one of the founders of modern environmental biophysics. He pioneered the application of physical principles in the study of how plants and animals interact with their immediate environment. He started his career at Rothamsted Experimental Station in Harpenden, England and was hired as professor at Nottingham in the early 1970’s. He went on to spend time at the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India. He published a textbook that has been a foundation for Environmental Biophysics, called Principles of Environmental Physics. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of London, which is the highest scientific distinction a person can receive in the UK. He was also a member of the Royal Meteorological Society and was its president in 1978. These societies are both sponsored by the crown, and he told me on the occasion that he was installed as the president of the Royal Meteorological Society, the queen attended and he sat by her at dinner. He is known for the Penman-Monteith equation that has become the basis for guidelines for estimating irrigation water requirements used by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).

How did you meet him?

As an undergraduate, I knew of John because I worked for a professor at Utah State University (Sterling Taylor), who was measuring water potential in soil using thermocouple psychrometers. I was keenly interested in the subject, so Dr. Taylor gave me a paper on thermocouple psychrometers to read, published in 1958 by Monteith and Owen, written while John was at Rothamsted. John’s work there was influential in developing instrumentation which formed the foundation for Wescor, METER, and several other companies.

When Prof. Monteith’s book came out, it was pretty exciting for me, because it had everything in it that I was trying to teach as a professor of Soil Science. I wrote to John in 1977 inquiring about the possibility of doing a sabbatical there, and he wrote back immediately and arranged for us to come. Amazingly, he and his technician met our big family at Heathrow airport and loaded up the whole crew, including our many duffel bags, into a university minibus. A couple of our bags were missing, and John picked them up from the railway station in Nottingham and delivered them to us the next day. I have often marveled that such a busy and important man would take the time to care for us like that.

A sunflower field in Karnataka, India

What was he like as a colleague?

He was a humble man in a lot of ways. After he passed away, one of his colleagues wrote in and told about some of the experiences he’d had with John in India. India has a pretty hierarchical society, and it’s not uncommon for somebody who is in a position of authority to take advantage of that. John was in charge of one of the big groups within ICRISAT, and the thing that impressed his colleague was that whoever came into John’s office was treated with great respect, whether it was the cleaning person or the lab technician. If they had come to see him, they got the same treatment and the same respect that the director of the lab got.

We worked on a lot of projects together, but the proposal we submitted that was funded was one on improving thermocouple psychometry. I wrote up the paper, but he had written the proposal and provided the funding for the work. I put him down as an author on the paper, and when I got ready to submit it, he went over the paper just as if he were an author and then crossed his name out. He said he hadn’t contributed enough. Well, he contributed way more than most authors do, but he had a set of standards that he expected himself to meet and his contributions to that paper hadn’t met those standards. He was pretty amazing that way.

How did he get to be a part of the Penman-Monteith Equation?

Penman was head of the research group at Rothamsted Experimental Station which Monteith joined, following graduation. Penman was already an established researcher by the time Monteith got there, and the Penman equation was already well known. But, Monteith worked with that equation, and in my opinion, improved it substantially. He never wanted to take credit for that. He always claimed that Penman already understood the things he had added, and he never did call it a Penman-Monteith equation, always referring to it as the Penman equation. But I have never read things of Penman’s that indicated that he had anywhere near the depth of understanding of the equation that Monteith had. To my way of thinking, it’s completely appropriate that his name is associated with it.

What was John’s secret to accomplishing all he did, and how can scientists today emulate his meaningful career?

His gift was the gift of clear thinking. I gave a talk about him a while ago entitled “Try a Straight Line First.” John hated the complexity of modern computer models for crop growth because he couldn’t easily see the end from the beginning in those models. He had the ability to look at a problem, no matter how complex, and just reach in and grab the essence of that problem and show it to you. He used to talk about Occam’s Razor and not multiplying complexity. Einstein was supposed to have said, “Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” John was always able to find a simple way to look at problems. It may have been a complex process to get there, but once he was done, you had something that you could manipulate. I think simplicity and uncluttered thinking would be the thing to emulate.

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Feb 2

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Learn to Measure Water Potential at a Bodentag

One of the best parts of my job is the opportunity I get to teach others about the science and technique of measurement. For more than 10 years, I have participated in seminars and workshops all over the world to do just that. But, a couple of months ago, I had my first opportunity to work with my good friend Georg von Unold (METER Ag) to do a Bodentag workshop, German-style. I learned a lot from my experience, and I think the participants did as well.

UMS’s Georg von Unold with his backhoe, digging a permanent soil observation pit in the Black Forest

A Bodentag (meaning “soil day” in German) is an unusual opportunity for the attendees to get practical hands-on teaching and training from the people who understand soil and environmental instrumentation. In a typical conference, you will not get a chance to do things under field conditions. Instead of sitting in a conference room all day, a Bodentag starts with presentations to set the stage with the theory and principles of measurement, but quickly moves to the lab and field to get the participant’s hands dirty. With the diversity of measurements required for today’s multidisciplinary research, there is great value in structured field installation familiarity.

Our trip to Freiburg was a great example of how a Bodentag works. Preparation started early in the morning the day before as Georg used his large Mercedes Sprinter van full of equipment to tow his Bobcat excavator for more than five hours on our drive from Munich. When we got there, we were directed to a nearby site in the Black Forest where we used the excavator to dig a permanent soil observation pit (Georg’s gift to the institute there), complete with a stairwell that allowed people to go and inspect the pit face and install sensors. We prepared other stations to get people to install soil sensors with minimum impact, cut out intact soil columns for a field lysimeter, and remove intact soil cores.

Georg standing in the finished soil observation pit

The day of Bodentag, participants listened to two hours of lecture/presentations in the morning followed by both lab and field practicum sessions. During the field practicum, attendees could do actual installations of sensors into pit faces. This was useful because there were several researchers there who had Black Forest research sites, and they could look at and ask questions about the challenges of the rocky soil pervasive in that region. We used augers to dig holes to install Decagon sensors so everyone could see how that was done. Georg had one of his Smart Field Lysimeters out there and did a half-field installation. He showed them how to dig the Smart Field Lysimeter down into the soil, scrape the soil off, and actually collect a monolith right there.

After the outdoor practicum session, we went back to the lab where we broke up into small groups. There, people had an opportunity to go see laboratory instrumentation while learning some best practices for making measurements. In mine, people were using the WP4C water potential instrument to figure out the permanent wilting point of the soil that we brought. Attendees also got some careful training on the Hyprop to measure the wet end of the moisture release curve as well as learning about the KSAT, a METER instrument which measures saturated hydraulic conductivity. Because Bodentag is an opportunity to share ideas, we also got a chance to see the multi-step outflow instrumentation developed over the past 20 years by the Forest Research Center there in Freiburg that they use to create soil moisture characteristic curves.

2014 Bodentag attendees

At the end of the day, everyone was exhausted, and we still had a five-hour drive left to get back to Munich. But, everyone had a great time, and the students and researchers who were there learned enough so they could be confident when using an instrument to get the data they need in an experiment. It was a unique opportunity for me to see how to put together a great educational experience, and I am excited to try one here in the U.S. sometime soon: especially if I can run the excavator again!

Download the “Researcher’s complete guide to water potential”—>

Download the “Researcher’s complete guide to soil moisture”—>

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