ENTS: Experiences in Co-Designed Environmental Sensing

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) deployed in the natural environment offer well-established benefits for prediction, modeling, timely response, and informed decision making in the face of the accelerating climate crisis. To facilitate faster experimentation and deployment, researchers have focused on developing WSN platforms that support rapid prototyping and field readiness. Despite their potential, these platforms have historically seen limited uptake both among domain scientists and the broader IoT research community. In this paper, we present insights gained from the development of ENTS (Environmental NeTworked Sensing)—a WSN platform co-designed with three distinct groups of domain scientists through an iterative development process. We describe the evolution of ENTS from a simple analog measurement tool to an extensible platform actively supporting collaborations with diverse domain experts. We synthesize our experience into a set of design principles aimed at fostering impactful and lasting research partnerships. Finally, we instantiate the outlined design principles for future interdisciplinary sensing efforts, including open-source hardware, firmware, low-cost custom weatherproof enclosures, and a web-based visualization tool.

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Stephen Taylor, John Madden, Laura Jaliff, Aaron Wu, Alec Levy, Jack Lin, Ahmed Falah, Tyler Potyondy, Josiah Hester, George Wells, Yaman Sangar, Pat Pannuto, and Colleen Josephson