Building a Raspberry Pi magnetometer network for schools in the UK

Beggan, Ciaran; Marple, Steve. 2019 Building a Raspberry Pi magnetometer network for schools in the UK. [Poster] In: National Astronomy Meeting 2019, Lancaster, UK, 02 July 2019. (Unpublished)

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Abstract/Summary

As computing and geophysical sensor components have become increasingly affordable over the past decade, it is now possible to design and build a cost-effective system for monitoring the Earth's natural magnetic field variations, in particular for space weather events. Modern fluxgate magnetometers are sensitive down to the sub-nanoTesla (nT) level, which far exceeds the level of accuracy required to detect very small variations of the external magnetic field. When the popular Raspberry Pi single-board computer is combined with a suitable digitiser it can be used as a low-cost data logger. We adapted off-the-shelf components to design a magnetometer system for schools and developed bespoke Python software to build a network of low-cost magnetometers across the UK.