Handheld Environmental Sensor Suite

The need for small portable, low-cost instruments for field environmental measurements is well documented. Nomadics is developing powerful handheld instruments based on the portable computers and PCMCIA cards. We intent to marry existing proven (but not yet deployed) sensor technologies with portable computers (such as laptops, palmtops and PDAs) using the industry standard PCMCIA card and virtual instrument software as the integrating elements. Under the effort proposed here, Nomadics proposes to develop a suite of environmental instruments based on the PCMCIA standard. In the Phase I effort, we will develop a proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate the concept of combining existing electrochemical sensors with handheld computing devices. The primary objective being to show that by employing the PCMCIA standard, virtual instrument software and novel cable/connector assemblies that a powerful, commercially viable means is available to allow rapid integration of sensor technologies into fielded instruments.