Keeping Arthropods Alive at INBio, Costa Rica

ICINGAin Action

The National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) of Costa Rica seeks to ensure the conservation of biodiversity and make the world a better place. Along the way, ICINGA has been there to help out. By monitoring the environment of biological collec-tions, ICINGA has been able to take the load o� busy lab technicians.

The National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) of Costa Rica is a private research and biodiversity manage-ment centre, established in 1989 to support e�orts to gather knowledge on the country’s biological diversity and promote its sustainable use. The institute works under the premise that the best way to conserve biodiversity is to study it, value it, and utilize the opportunities it o�ers to improve the quality of life of human beings.

INBio is a non-governmental, non-pro�t, public interest organiza-tion of civil society that works in close collaboration with di�erent govern-ment institutions, universities, the private sector and other public and private organizations, both within and outside Costa Rica.

PAPER TRACKINGIf Costa Rica contains 5% of the world's biodiversity in just 51,100 km², then INBio houses a large and very precious collection of biological specimens. Maintaining optimal temperature and humidity is essential to their conservation.

For INBio, tracking the environmental changes of biological collections used to mean walking to the thermostat and recording what was read on a sheet of paper on the wall. This of course could only be carried out intermit-tently. Sometimes air conditioning equipment failed and it was of critical importance that it be detected immediately to prevent irrevers-ible damage. So a new solution was needed.

BOXES TO TICKHerson Esquivel Vargas, Systems Administra-tor at INBio took on the task. There were plenty of solutions on the market- appliances with pluggable sensors, even with web interfaces. These often cost >US$1000 for the main appliance and associated sensors cost US$200 or so.

However, as a non-governmental, non-pro�t organisation, INBio required a solution that was low cost in both hardware and software. It needed to be easy to use and allow data to be checked, away from the physical collec-tions.

ICINGA TO THE RESCUELuckily INBio was no stranger to free and open source software. INBio had even developed its own specialized tools and released it under free licences (http://informatics.inbio.ac.cr/projects.html). In tune with their software philosophy and thanks to its great community support, ICINGA was picked out to be the most convincing monitoring system.

In a pilot study, Herson teamed ICINGA up with a TEMPerHUM temperature and humidity sensor, and a Sheeva-Plug computer in a standalone setup (see Figure 1).

The sensor collected environmental data and connected to Ethernet LAN (IEEE 802.3) via the Sheeva-Plug computer to relay its readings to the ICINGA Core. Herson wrote a Sheeva plugin for this task, which he has made available at INBio's subversion server (svn://pulsatrix.inbio.ac.cr/temper_hum/).

From there the environmental readings con�gured at 5 minute intervals were saved in a MySQL database for ICINGA Web to collect data as requested by the client, and display as returned check results in its user interface. In so doing, ICINGA has helped to keep the diptera (otherwise known as �ies) at INBio in good condition.

HATCH TWO CHICKS WITH ONE EGGThe two collections of arthropods with varying environmental conditions, are currently under ICINGA’s watch. At the same time, a tool was required to monitor INBio’s various applications and servers in their data center. In a simple extension, two objectives were met with one tool.

LOOKING FORWARDIn the future, Herson hopes to integrate SMS alerts, automated graphing and even a system to remotely control air conditioners and dehumidi�ers all in a smooth continuous process.

At the moment he’s growing his set up to over 20 hosts and 60 services. If anything is certain, the monitoring project will grow to ensure the happy livelihood of a few more arthropod collections.

ICINGA is an enterprise grade open source monitoring system which keeps watch over networks and any conceivable network resource, noti�es the user of errors and recoveries and generates perfor-mance data for reporting. Scalable and extensible, ICINGA can monitor complex, large environments across dispersed locations.

WHAT IS ICINGA?

ICINGA takes open source monitoring to the next level.

- Open Source Monitoring | www.icinga.org | info@icinga.org

Special thanks to: Herson Esquivel Vargas, Systems Administrator at INBio

ICINGA

Figure 1: INBio Biological Environmental Monitoring

MySQL Database

ICINGA Core

TEMPerHUM Sensor

ICINGA Web Internet