W8UKE Repeater Rack temperature monitoring
APRS Telemetry demonstration project
(January 2008)

In January 2008, an APRS telemetry demonstration project was conducted at the W8UKE repeater site (Athens Ohio) with the goal of better determining the amount of heat needed within the repeater equipment rack to keep the various solid state devices from misbehaving during very cold weather,

We wanted the raw real-time telemetry to be copyable directly off air (see related technical discussion) but also wanted advanced spreadsheet and graphing support via the internet. This project provided a nice opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of APRS-based telemetry.

Data collection and APRS encoding were provided by an Argent Data Systems OpenTracker+ housed inside the repeater rack, connected to a low power HT, which transmitted once per hour. These low power signals were relayed at higher power by the W8UKE-1 APRS digipeater also housed in the same building.

Data were collected from January 8-28, 2008, and documented rack heater adjustments made by the Repeater Trustee as the tests progressed. The telemetry also documented a couple of power outages at the site during strong wind events. The graph below shows an example of the inside versus outside temperature plots generated. Other related links:

Complete Jan 8-28, 2008 dataset in CSV
Complete Jan 8-28, 2008 dataset in Excel
Complete Jan 8-28, 2008 dataset in PDF

73 de Ted W8KVK