TELEMETRY AND THE INTERNET

This paper provides an overview of recent advances in wireless telemetry and Internet browser technology for the collection and distribution of water, weather and climate data. Comparisons between performance, data reliability and life cycle costs are presented for the various options that are available to the user for routing data from a remote site to a desktop browser.The choice between using satellite, cellular, meteor burst and various VHF/UHF technologies is not always clear cut and involves a trade-off between geographic coverage, latency of data and network service fees. This paper provides guidelines and figures of merit to assist the user in choosing an appropriate wireless technology.Web based access to remote sites is becoming a very cost effective means of collecting, archiving and displaying hydrometeorological data using a desktop PC. Remote station configuration, security, data basing and text messaging are topics that are discussed.Finally, cooperative arrangements between government and industry are becoming more common place to take advantage of the various telemetry and browser technologies that are being used by these various agencies. A cooperative venture between Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Meteor Communications Corporation (MCC) in Stoneville, Mississippi is described as an example of this trend.