Page 48 - Occupational Health & Safety, November 2017

INSTRUMENTS
USB or Bluetooth Temperature Loggers in the Field –Which Are Right for You?
For outdoor field monitoring, data access can be a critical issue— especially in hard-to-reach or limited-access locations, such as bird nests, tree canopies, bat caves, or fragile habitats.
BY PAUL GANNETT
Accurate outdoor data is critical to field re- search aimed at understanding and pro- tecting the environment, from how natural ecosystems are responding to changing conditions to the impacts of human interactions. To- day, there are a range of solutions on the market for systematically collecting vital temperature and rela- tive humidity (RH) data. These include options for how the data loggers communicate for setup and data offload using technologies such as Universal Serial Bus (USB) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Howev- er, with more options, it can be difficult to determine the best approach for a given project. Following are factors researchers should consider when choosing between BLE and USB data loggers.
How USB and BLE Data Loggers Work
Field temp/RH data loggers are vital tools for moni-
toring environments, offering the capacity to auto- matically collect data on a continuous 24/7 basis and provide a comprehensive picture of changing condi- tions. The two primary types of field temp/RH data loggers available are traditional USB options and new- er models utilizing Bluetooth technology.
With USB, users physically connect the data log- ger to the USB port of a computer or handheld device (shuttle) to retrieve and download data. USB loggers may have a built-in USB connection or use optical communication via a base station or data shuttle, which then plugs into a computer’s USB port. Because loggers with optical communication don’t have elec- trical connections, they can provide better reliabil- ity outdoors, but they need an optical data shuttle to offload data if users want to avoid taking a laptop into the field.
By contrast, data loggers with Bluetooth com-
EP44 Environmental Protection | NOVEMBER 2017
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