SDI-12 data logging on Beagle Bone Black

In my previous post, I wrote about my initial success reading SDI-12 sensors using my SDI-12 USB adapter and a Beagle Bone Black (BBB), via a simple linux command “screen”. Upon further testing, I had trouble running my open-source python data logging script on BBB, because a number of python modules including pyserial and urllib3 are missing and I couldn’t install them the way I used to do on a Raspberry Pi. So after searching online for the past few days, I finally found how to solve the problem and here is a screen shot of the data logging script happily logging data on BBB:

The SDI-12 sensor I was using was the GPS sensor from my newest SDI-12 + GPS USB adapter. It has an on-board GPS module (separate purchase from Adafruit and its vendors). I was logging coordinates.

Here are the steps to prepare your BBB to run the data logging script:

1. Install pip for python3: sudo apt-get install python3-pip
2. Upgrade pip: sudo pip3 install –upgrade pip
3. Install pyserial module: sudo pip3 install pyserial
4. Install dropbox module: sudo pip3 install dropbox

The reason that I installed dropbox is because that I can use it to send data files from remote logger to my desktop, and installing it upgrades urllib3, which I use to generate URI-safe address for sending data to sparkfun’s phant server. If you are not doing telemetry or you prefer logging into your BBB to get your data files, you don’t have to install dropbox or upgrade urllib3. Now all I have to do is to update my documentation and welcome BBB to the club!