| Measurement Engineering Australia | 
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Measurement Engineering Australia (MEA) is an established engineering firm based in Adelaide (South Australia) and founded in 1985. Known in the viticultural industry for their Automatic Weather Stations, MEA's engineering team began work in 1995 to provide a means of automatically logging gypsum blocks, to provide continuous soil moisture measurement.This is the story of that development process and its outcomes. |
 Measurement Engineering Australia Data Logging Application and Measurement Systems Engineers 41 Vine St, MAGILL, SA 5072, Australia ph 61 8 8332 9044, fax 61 8 8332 9577 e-mail: sales@mea.com.au |
The gypsum block has been around since the 1940's,
making it one of the oldest methods of soil moisture measurements. At
about A$20 per block, it is also one of the cheapest methods of soil
moisture measurement. And because the gypsum block can be read manually by
the grower with a hand-held reader (about A$700), the cost per measurement
point remains the lowest in the industry.
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| Gypsum blocks aren't perfect, but they are practical and
reliable. One of their failings is that they (like the neutron
probe) have traditionally been a manually read device, limiting the
number of readings available to one or two per site per week.
Measurement Engineering Australia (MEA) is an established
engineering firm based in Adelaide (South Australia) and founded in 1985.
Known in the viticultural industry for their Automatic
Weather Stations, MEA's engineering team began work in 1995 to
provide a means of automatically logging gypsum blocks, to provide
continuous soil moisture measurement.
This is the story of that development process and its outcomes. Click a link to read further.. |
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© Bruce
Metelerkamp
www.sowacs.com/feature/mea/mea.html
last update : 23 Feb 2003