A Method Comparison Study between Open Source and Industrial Weather Stations †

Abstract

Open-source devices are widespread and have been available to everyone over the past decade. The low cost of such devices boosts the creation of instruments for various applications such as smart farming, environmental monitoring, animal behavior monitoring, human health monitoring, etc. This research aims to use statistical methods to assess agreement and similarity in order to compare an open-source weather station that was constructed and programmed from scratch with an industrial weather station. The experiment took place in the experimental Greenhouses of the University of Thessaly, Velestino, Greece, for 7 consecutive days. The topology of the experiment consisted of 30 open-source weather stations and three industrials, creating three clusters with a ratio of 10 open-source to 1 industrial. The results revealed low to high agreement across the measurement range, with high variability, possibly due to factors that were not considered in the statistical model. © 2021 by the authors.