Dataloggers

Dee Stubbs-Lee <dee.stubbs-lee [at] nbm-mnb__ca> writes

>... I would be
>interested in hearing from any mid sized museums who have been using
>HOBO or other similar data logging systems who are willing to
>comment on their experiences in making this switch. One concern that
>we have is that we may consider moving to a new building at some
>point, and we need a system that is either cost effective enough to
>be considered an interim solution, or one that can be easily moved
>and adapted to a new site. As our conservation/collections staff is
>very small, we also need a system that is very time-effective and
>user friendly.

Jefferson Patterson Park / MAC Lab have been using HOBO dataloggers
for 5 years now in a variety of situations and find them very useful
and convenient.

We currently have 21 dataloggers scattered over 5 buildings, storage
spaces, and laboratories.  We use both the base model, and the HOBO
Pro which is sealed for more extreme environments.  I've trained one
of our maintenance staff to download them on his usual rounds, using
the HOBO "Shuttle", then I download the files to my computer and
post the results as a read-only file on our network so interested
people can see the results.  This makes it very easy to share
information with the collection managers, Facilities crew, etc.  I
now have 5 years of environmental data available on the central
server, and this has been very useful to Facilities when they talk
to engineers about our environmental system repairs and upgrades.

Future expansion is quite easy, we just buy more units and place
them where they are needed.  The most critical part is having one
(and only one!) person responsible for keeping track of where they
are, and doing the periodic downloads (we download monthly, but
occasionally more often if we are keeping a close eye on a
particular space.

Howard Wellman
410-586-8577
Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum
Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 19:6
                   Distributed: Sunday, July 17, 2005
                        Message Id: cdl-19-6-010
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