By: Brett Stoddard

To test the probe described in my previous blog post, I deposited the probes in a banana plant I had handy.

How I built the probes by inserting heater wire and type T thermocouples into hypodermic needles. More resources can be found in my last post and in the following paper by Davis et al. Post here. Paper here. 

The graph result of the test is below:

As you can see, the top probe was not reading the correct temperature. This was probably an issue with the accuracy because it remained surprisingly precise meaning that the results shouldn’t be completely discarded. Daily trends are evidence that the sensor could be working somewhat. This is nowhere near the accuracy I intend to get with my final design.

However, there definitely is something interesting going on here. The data was recorded over an interval of three days. Examining the Differential plot, there seem to be roughly three major up-and-downs that PROBABLY are related to the day-night cycles of photosynthesis.