Certain weather variables such as air temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH) play an important role on agricultural production. Under proper combinations, these climatic factors may generate quantitative and qualitative increments in the final product, which makes them essential at their monitoring and management within the production environment. Data acquisition is an important tool which can assist this process, resulting in higher efficiency and rational use of resources. In this way, the present work had as objective the development of a compact data acquisition system (DAS), in a datalogger form (with easy build) to monitor T and RH. The data acquired from the sensors are stored in a removable USB flash drive and, afterwards, analyzed by a computer via software. To evaluate the performance of DAS, these data were compared with both conventional and automated meteorological station data, showing similar RH values in both cases. For T, replacement of the operational amplifier is required. Therefore, the usage of the developed DAS is feasible, even at field applications.
Data acquisition system; weather variables; embedded microcontroller
