From cows to canvas panels: Measuring emissions in naturally ventilated livestock barns

This lightning talk explains how emissions can be measured in naturally ventilated livestock barns housing cattle and pigs using temporary sensor campaigns and Grafana. The sensors run for 2–3 weeks per campaign, several times per year, so the focus is on collecting consistent data and comparing results across campaigns — not on 24/7 live monitoring.

Sunil Gopalakrishna, a Researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Technology, walks through the full pipeline: sensor nodes, data ingestion, a time series database, and Grafana dashboards. He shares what must be consistent for results to be trustworthy: a shared time reference, a stable naming scheme for sensors and measurements, and clear metadata (campaign, site, animal type, sensor location, and calibration state). Simple quality flags highlight missing periods and obvious spikes so plots are interpreted correctly.

Finally, Sunil shares the campaign dashboards: annotated time series for key events (cleaning, feeding, ventilation changes) and a canvas panel with a barn layout that displays sensor dots on a floorplan and marks when thresholds are crossed. Basic integrity checks (data completeness, “last seen” during active windows, and ingestion errors) help identify data capture problems quickly.