DEVELOPMENT OF A SIMPLE & LOW-COST INSTRUMENTATION SYSTEM FOR REAL TIME VOLCANO MONITORING

An instrumentation which is used to monitoring of volcano activities usually has a complex structure and expensive. This, may difficult not only in procurement of the device but also in terms of maintenance. Aim of this research is to develop a simple and inexpensive instrumentation system for online volcano monitoring. For this purpose, the instrumentation system is built upon two main units, i.e. Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) and Master Terminal Unit (MTU). The RTU is sensing unit, which includes seismic sensor module and weather sensor module. Both the sensor modules are equipped with a microcontroller based data acquisition system. The MTU is control and data logger unit. It is built based on PC, and installed application’s software for data logger and interface to the internet network, allowing users to access the volcano activity that was monitored by real time, from anywhere. The connection between MTU and RTU performed wirelessly using a digital radio transceiver. The RTU’s work function is fully controlled by the MTU. This system has been tested on laboratory scale and work well