Abstract

The development of industry and computer networks and the requirements of automation in daily life have led to the need for greater networking capability between smarter computer programs, services, and environments. In the past few decades, because of the rapid development of integrated circuits, the computing ability of chips increased rapidly, and the size of peripheral components and devices decreased rapidly. Nowadays, computer systems must handle far more than single calculations, and people expect them to be increasingly smarter to make their work easier. Systems are based on a modular design to respond rapidly to changing requirements while consuming less energy. Companies have developed many kinds of devices and software to satisfy various requirements, including environmental sensing, data processing, and automatic controlling. These products provide hardware and software to help researchers collect various kinds of environmental data. However, while not all products facilitate remote data collection, those that do often entail increased communication costs and power consumption, especially when deploying many devices. Many public places have been closed in 2020 due to COVID-19, which poses new challenges to data collection, including gathering environmental data when access to the site is prohibited and how to transfer data via cellular networks while minimizing costs and power consumption. This thesis proposes a design that encompasses hardware and software that will solve the problems related to remote data collection, edge computing, remote system control, low power data collection, the modular system, data security, and backup. The ultimate goals include reducing the costs of system maintenance, minimizing the difficulties of data collection and processing, simplifying system configuration, and controlling and ensuring data integrity.