HIGROTERM: An Open-Source and Low-Cost Temperature and Humidity Monitoring System for Laboratory Applications
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
- The authors presented the design of an open source project of an sensing and instrumentation system.
- The novelty and innovation of the presented design is not clear. The design is very similar to those found in Arduino hobbyists websites.
- The authors are suggested that they conduct experiments to validate the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed design and compare its performance with commercially available instrumentation system.
- The authors are suggested that they demonstrate example use cases of the proposed system in the paper.
Author Response
Please, see the attachment. The attachment is transcripted below.
Point 1: The authors presented the design of an open source project of an sensing and instrumentation system.
Response 1: Yes.
Point 2: The novelty and innovation of the presented design is not clear. The design is very similar to those found in Arduino hobbyists websites.
Response 2: The authors entirely agree with this statement. However, we stand by the usefulness of the work in the sense that it provides interested readers/users with a completely functional logging system, with the main contribution and innovation being the user interface based on the LCD touchscreen, which makes the system more friendly to people not familiar with electronics and that may not be comfortable with operating the system using serial port communications, configuring the system via source code editing and updating, and other necessities typical of a system with no user interface.
The fact that an open-source user interface is implemented for visualization, recording and configuration, can be interpreted as the innovation of the work. Also, the fact that the source code of such interface is thoroughly explained and conceived in a way to easily allow further expansions, as well as the system hardware for allowing complete replication of the system, may also be of valuable to some readers that are capable of prototyping/developing the system even further.
Lastly, we also agree that Arduino hobbyists websites are a very rich source of information for low-cost prototyping, and this work relied heavily on these sources, such as tutorial and forum websites. However, while very useful for teaching and hands-on practice for people with a tendency of self-taught in electronics, these sources may not be at reach for the average scientific community that still look for traditional scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals, such as Invention,s when looking for solutions for scientific challenges in their experimental campaigns. In this way, we see this work as filling this gap, as the scientific literature rarely brings a report of a fully developed, functional, tested and open-source low-cost electronics system that allows replication, which such publications being left only in hobbyists websites.
Point 3: The authors are suggested that they conduct experiments to validate the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed design and compare its performance with commercially available instrumentation system.
Response 3: A comparison between commercial sensors of temperature and humidity was included, as well as a report of the use of the system in the context of a laboratorial research.
Point 4: The authors are suggested that they demonstrate example use cases of the proposed system in the paper.
Response 4: A chapter with a report of the use of the system in the context of a laboratorial research was included, in which we try to demonstrate how the system solved limitations of available commercial systems.
Reviewer 2 Report
The article presents an open-source temperature acquisition system based on Arduino and DHT22 sensor. The source code and supporting files are made available online. Linguistically, the article is well written. On the other hand, scientifically, there is no breakthrough in the proposed system, the bits and pieces of the system are well known in the DIY community, and the article does not add that much to the overall available knowledge. However, the article is of interest for certain readers (perspective users of the system who do not have formal education in electrical/electronic engineering):
I leave the accept/reject decision to the editor. Below are some recommendations, the authors are encouraged to take them into consideration:
- In the introduction, line 26, the authors wrote “has becoming”. It shall be “has become” instead.
- In line 77, the authors wrote “on the literature”, {in} shall be used instead of “on”.
- In line 96, the authors wrote “without lacking”, the authors shall use either “without” or “lacking”. The reviewer believes it is a typo.
- In line 109, the authors wrote “easy-t-use”, fix the typo.
- In line 123, the authors wrote “with allows”, it shall be {which allows}.
- In line 129, “presented on the following sections”, on, shall be {in}.
- Figure 6 is not fully see in the page, it is half missing, the authors need to resize the figure to fit the page.
- Figure 6 in page 9 is repeated in page 11. I see that on page 9 the authors shall only reference figure 6, please verify?
- In the repository webpage, inside the readme file, “wheter” shall be {whether}.
Author Response
Please, see the attachment. The attachment is transcripted below.
Point 1: In the introduction, line 26, the authors wrote “has becoming”. It shall be “has become” instead.
Response 1: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Point 2: In line 77, the authors wrote “on the literature”, {in} shall be used instead of “on”.
Response 2: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Point 3: In line 96, the authors wrote “without lacking”, the authors shall use either “without” or “lacking”. The reviewer believes it is a typo.
Response 3: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Point 4: In line 109, the authors wrote “easy-t-use”, fix the typo.
Response 4: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Point 5: In line 123, the authors wrote “with allows”, it shall be {which allows}.
Response 5: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Point 6: In line 129, “presented on the following sections”, on, shall be {in}.
Response 6: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Point 7: Figure 6 is not fully see in the page, it is half missing, the authors need to resize the figure to fit the page.
Response 7: Indeed, it was a problem with Word’s figure captioning tool. The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Point 8: Figure 6 in page 9 is repeated in page 11. I see that on page 9 the authors shall only reference figure 6, please verify?
Response 8: Indeed, it was a problem with Word’s figure captioning tool. The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Point 9: In the repository webpage, inside the readme file, “wheter” shall be {whether}.
Response 9: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version, as well as other minor typos, as can be checked in the link: https://gitfront.io/r/user-6670065/73db890c335ae0fa46a8cb84c02b78c11600316e/HIGROTERM/
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper presents system for temperature and humidity measurement and logging. Although the methods are adequately presented, the introduction and conclusion must be improved by adding relevant references.
Line 263: missing reference to figure b).
Author Response
Please, see the attachment. The attachment is transcribed below.
Point 1: The paper presents system for temperature and humidity measurement and logging. Although the methods are adequately presented, the introduction and conclusion must be improved by adding relevant references.
Response 1: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version. Relevant references were added to introduction, so to address the real problems, of material testing requirements, that drove the development of the HIGROTERM system. The conclusion was further expanded to address the inclusion of validation and application results.
Point 2: Line 263: missing reference to figure b).
Response 2: The authors appreciate the correction and implemented it on the revised version.
Reviewer 4 Report
This paper presents a lab monitoring systems created using an Arduino.
I am struggling to find a signification contribution in this paper? You have basically got an Arduino, inserted a bunch of sensors and an LCD screen on a breadboard and are then trying to market it as a low cost lab monitoring system..
In actuality, the beauty of an Ardunio is that is can be used for practicality anything in any configuration. You could in fact find the code for all the elements of your lab monitoring system online. So one could argue that your only contribution is putting these elements together in a box, and saying this is suitable for a lab environment.
The problem is that it probably isn't safe for lab environments and this is not tested in your study. Moisture, infrasound, vibration and many other external factors with have an impact on your system.. these would need to be evaluated as part of the developmental process. There is no field testing of your equipment in different environments to establish how effective and safe the system is and if it could pass something like a standard PAT test. It is ok to say this is a cheaper alternative to commercial products..but part of that cost is in the inspection and certification of the equipment to say it is appropriate to use in lab environments.
The use of low-cost open-source electronics prototyping, and do-it-yourself (DIY) 25 platforms, has becoming increasingly common across all fields of science.........yes but only for prototyping, to put anything electrical into a lab environment it needs to be certified and checked be a qualified electrician.
I think you need to totally rethink this paper, the application of the system and include field testing. You then need to no 'market' this system under a name like you are trying to sell it, but as a system that could be used by amateurs / students at home.
Author Response
Please, see the attachment. The attachment is transcripted below.
Point 1: This paper presents a lab monitoring systems created using an Arduino. I am struggling to find a signification contribution in this paper? You have basically got an Arduino, inserted a bunch of sensors and an LCD screen on a breadboard and are then trying to market it as a low cost lab monitoring system.
In actuality, the beauty of an Ardunio is that is can be used for practicality anything in any configuration. You could in fact find the code for all the elements of your lab monitoring system online. So one could argue that your only contribution is putting these elements together in a box, and saying this is suitable for a lab environment.
Response 1: The authors agree with this statement and appreciate the insights given.
However, we stand by the usefulness of the work in the sense that it provides interested readers/users with a completely functional logging system, with the main contribution and innovation being the user interface based on the LCD touchscreen, which makes the system more friendly to people not familiar with electronics. Also, since the system is thoroughly explained and all the necessary source files and information are made available to the readers, the system can be easily expanded for monitoring more sensor channels or even other sensors, being the base for other projects even not related to temperature and humidity monitoring.
Coming from a Civil Engineering background, we see that many of our colleagues still don’t see low-cost prototyping electronics as a tool for problem solving in experimental campaigns. Most rely only in off-the-shelf solution, which are either too expensive, require importation from foreign countries with associated high risks of late delivery or even no delivery at all, or no suitable at all for the a given need, which was the case of the present work. The reasons for this may be various, from lack of electronics background to lack of research schedule to be dedicated to developing an accessory tool that is not their main research focus.
Arduino hobbyists websites have lots of tutorials for temperature and humidity data-logging system, but so far we did not notice any providing a system with an elaborated user interface, with configuration and data visualization capabilities via an LCD touchscreen, which could fill the gap for non-experienced users in electronics that, while needing a customized monitoring system to solve their problem, may lack motivation to be self-taught in a level required for building their own monitoring system, even if guided by a hobbyist tutorial, that would require operation via serial port, configuration via source code editing and updating, and other necessities typical of a system with no developed user interface.
So, our goal was to share with other colleagues how we tackled a real problem we had in our lab, for monitoring and logging temperature and humidity in various environments, of different size, location and ambient conditions, at the same time by a single system. With this, we aimed to contribute in two ways: provide the “blueprints” for complete reproduction, as we deemed that our design would be flexible enough to be useful for lots of different situations, and not too specific for problems too similar to ours; show to other colleagues how low-cost prototyping electronics may be used to produce tailored solutions to overcome scientific research challenges.
Point 2: The problem is that it probably isn't safe for lab environments and this is not tested in your study. Moisture, infrasound, vibration and many other external factors with have an impact on your system.. these would need to be evaluated as part of the developmental process. There is no field testing of your equipment in different environments to establish how effective and safe the system is and if it could pass something like a standard PAT test. It is ok to say this is a cheaper alternative to commercial products..but part of that cost is in the inspection and certification of the equipment to say it is appropriate to use in lab environments. The use of low-cost open-source electronics prototyping, and do-it-yourself (DIY) 25 platforms, has becoming increasingly common across all fields of science.........yes but only for prototyping, to put anything electrical into a lab environment it needs to be certified and checked be a qualified electrician.
Response 2: The authors fully agree with this statement and appreciate the insights given.
The lack of address to safety question was a weakness of the original draft, and we tried to address them in the new version. In the current version, we have included, in various parts of the text (lines 388-394 and lines 437-440), passages that stress this fact, so to warn users about the true level of development of the system, and limitations that one interested user shall be conscious of while reproducing the system.
We think it is useful, however, to share our thoughts about this concern, with the aim to improve even more the work. The context of the development of the system was to solve a real research problem that our lab was facing, which was hindering some undergoing projects and required a fast response due to schedule restrictions. We did not undergo any formal safety certifications and did not test it in environments different from the conditions of our own laboratory, as now stressed throughout the paper. Before effectively using the system in our lab, we evaluated, to the best of our knowledge, the environmental conditions of our own laboratory to check if any hazardous situation would arise with the use of the HIGROTERM system. We believe that interested users may be capable of performing themselves, or with their staff, this same analysis and judge whether the system is safe or not for use in their application.
Point 3: I think you need to totally rethink this paper, the application of the system and include field testing. You then need to no 'market' this system under a name like you are trying to sell it, but as a system that could be used by amateurs / students at home.
Response 3: We have included a chapter for validating the system and a chapter with a report of an application of the HIGROTERM system in material testing for mortar drying and salt crystallization tests.
The system was not conceived to be marketable. The given of the “HIGROTERM” name occurred primarily within our own research group, as an attempt to give some identity to the project, and then naturally translated to the writing of the paper.
We do understand that using such a name may seem as trademarking the system, but it is common in other open source projects already reported in papers (e.g. SitkaNet, MeteoMex, smARTS_Museum_V1, as shown in the references). No intention to sell the system as a low-cost replacement for commercial system was intended by us, and, besides releasing everything as open source, we believe we stressed this fact in passages (lines 388-394 and lines 437-440) of the new version.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
- The innovation of the work is not strong enough for a journal publication. Adding LCD based GUI to the system does not improve the level of innovation or novelty of the presented work.
- The presented work is a good low cost, open source project for data acquisition in hobbyist community or student project but not for scientific journal publication.
- The technical specifications of the commercial system used in the validation experiments should be mentioned in the manuscript. The technical specs of the presented system and the commercial system for comparison should be at the similar level.
- No dynamic characteristics of the proposed system was evaluated.
Author Response
The authors thank the comments and reviews of the reviewer. We attach our considerations regarding each of the 4 points, as well as reproduce them below:
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: The innovation of the work is not strong enough for a journal publication. Adding LCD based GUI to the system does not improve the level of innovation or novelty of the presented work.
Response 1: The authors thank the comment and partially agree with the notion that no novelty is brought by the work in terms of new hardware, software, or disruptive innovation, and understand the point of view that may lead to the evaluation of the work not being strong for a journal publication.
However, as mentioned in the previous review round, we stand by the usefulness of the work as a scientific paper when considering a public, of which we are very familiar with, that is not fluent in electronics but that have real needs of and may be benefitted from papers that report on low-cost and easy-to-implement technologies, in a manner at reach with their current level of knowledge and available time in their research schedule (since building such automated systems are usually just auxiliary tasks of their main work, which can’t take high amounts of time and resources).
The field of Civil and Material Engineering, of which we come from, is an example of such public, and we designed this work so they can have access to a system that is replicable by themselves, easily usable through a very simple user interface, and adaptable and expandable to other needs.
Point 2: The presented work is a good low cost, open source project for data acquisition in hobbyist community or student project but not for scientific journal publication.
Response 2: The authors thank the comment and agree that the nature of the system is very similar to projects found on hobbyist communities.
The system and the work, however, were not developed in the context of a hobby application or a student project, but as a response to real needs of research projects run at the Laboratory of Material Testing at University of Brasília. We have taken the inputs of the researchers of the lab in terms of what they needed to achieve and tailored the system to their specific needs, so research would become feasible, as reported in section 3.6 Application.
When considering this context, which is addressed in the Introduction section, we think that the work has a valuable contribution in reporting how low-cost electronics have been successfully used to solve real-world problems in a scientific research context, with an implementation that does not require deep specialized knowledge in electronics.
As we said, we hope to inspire colleagues, mainly from fields apart from Electrical and Electronics Engineering, to see low-cost electronics, specially when supported by easy-to-use prototyping platforms such as Arduino, can be a daily tool for problem solving in lab environment. Publishing this work in a scientific peer-reviewed journal as Inventions is of paramount importance to achieve a greater spread of this.
Point 3: The technical specifications of the commercial system used in the validation experiments should be mentioned in the manuscript. The technical specs of the presented system and the commercial system for comparison should be at the similar level.
Response 3: The authors thank the comment and agree with such needs.
The technical specs of the commercial system used in the validation was included in lines 292-296. This is the available commercial system at the Laboratory of Testing Material and used so far in the scientific tasks.
In terms of levels of the technical specs, we evaluate that the commercial system and the presented system are at similar levels: commercial has temperature range of -50°C to +70°C while presented has -40°C to +80°C; commercial has humidity range of 20% to 99% RH while presented has 0% to 100% RH; and commercial has accuracies of 1ºC and 5% RH while presented has 0.5ºC and 5% RH. These are all values informed by manufactures of the commercial system and the employed sensor in the presented system.
Point 4: No dynamic characteristics of the proposed system was evaluated.
Response 4: The authors thank the comment and agree that dynamic characteristics of the sensor used in the proposed system were not evaluated. We included this disclaimer in lines 330-340.
Considering the validation indicated the chosen sensor presented technical specs like those informed by its manufacturer, and that, for the use in which we are employing the system, the static characteristics of precision and accuracy were the relevant information, we decided to not go deeper into this matter. We, however, inserted citations in the text on works that lay the basics about temperature and humidity test setups that may be deployed to perform such characterization.
Reviewer 4 Report
This paper is acceptable now that the authors have made it clear that the system is not for commercial lab use and more towards hobbyists/students.
Author Response
The authors thank the Reviewer for their comment and suggestions that greatly improved the work.
