ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of computers and programming features that are important for environmental monitoring, in particular iterative calculation and measurement loops, serial communication, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion, and networks. Highlighted are single-board computers and microcontrollers, including basic concepts of computer organization and architecture, and their application for environmental monitoring. These devices and programming languages are employed later in Chapters 3–6 when studying sensors, data acquisition, dataloggers, and sensor networks.
