Sensor network for museum environmental monitoring

Abstract

Museum environmental monitoring is an important issue for the artifact conservation. Many solutions have been proposed to tackle this problem, but the museum constraints prevent an easy application in several cases, especially if the monitoring has to be performed in museums where an environmental control system has been already installed. This paper describes a simple though powerful solution, which complies with most of the common constraints and which is based on small sensors implementing a BT-LE wireless protocol coupled with a receiving architecture. The sensing nodes have dimensions of few centimeters, do not require cabling and power supply, and can work unattended for several years. Data are collected by a receiving architecture, which can work either on-line, with immediate data delivery, or off-line when an Internet connection is not available. Users can browse the measurements by using their smart-phones from any place and can download the data on their personal computer. In addition they can browse locally the data also in the absence of any data connection, such as in the case of remote and or recessed sites. The proposed solution has been deployed in three museums, also in the basements, and in an ancient building proving its flexibility and capability to be adapted to the different conditions.