Advanced Design and Implementation of a CanSat for Environmental Monitoring and Data Transmission

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of a CanSat system for real-time environmental monitoring and data forecasting. The CanSat prototype is built using a custom 3D-printed enclosure housing sensor such as BME280, MPU6050, and NEO-M8N, interfaced with an Arduino Nano. Data transmission is enabled through NRF modules, with the ground station comprising an NRF receiver paired with an ESP8266 microcontroller. Upon reception, the ESP8266 publishes the sensor data to an MQTT broker and concurrently logs it into an Excel sheet, while forwarding structured JSON packets at 3-second intervals to a web-based frontend. Due to the NRF’s limited payload capacity, sensor readings are batched every 3 seconds, with each JSON packet representing 1-second inter- vals. The frontend, developed using Next.js, provides interactive dashboards for visualizing real-time data, 7-day forecasts using Meta’s Prophet model, and historical sensor readings based on user queries. This architecture demonstrates a robust, modular approach to environmental telemetry and predictive analytics using low-cost hardware and modern web technologies.