The WISE-MUSE Project: Environmental Monitoring and Controlling of Museums based on Wireless Sensors Networks

A major concern to all museums’ managers is to properly conserve the artwork in museums and, for that to be achieved, it is fundamental to monitor the museum’s environment. Therefore, it is critical to continuously measure some environmental parameters, such as temperature, relative humidity, light and, also, pollutants, either in storage or exhibition rooms. The deployment of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) in a museum can help implementing these measurements continuously, in a real-time basis, and in a much easier and cheaper way than traditional procedures. In this paper, we describe an experimental testbed deployed in a contemporary art museum that is located in Madeira Island, in Portugal, and it reveals the preliminary results of these experiments. For this purpose, we have developed a new wireless sensor node that brings some advantages when compared with other commercially available solutions. This work is being developed in the context of the ongoing project on museum environmental and structural monitoring using WSNs, the WISEMUSE project.