The Development of the IoT Environmental Station for Tengah Island, Mersing, Johor.

Abstract

Remote island ecosystems require continuous environmental monitoring to support biodiversity conservation; however, such environments often lack stable power supply and communication infrastructure. Pulau Tengah, located off the coast of Mersing, Johor, Malaysia, is a biodiversity hotspot and an important sea turtle nesting site where manual monitoring methods remain limited and discontinuous. This study presents the design, development, and field deployment of a solar-powered Internet of Things (IoT) environmental monitoring station under the Sustainable Project for IoT Environmental Station (SPIES) initiative. The system integrates multiple sensors for temperature, relative humidity, air quality, and wind speed, controlled by an ESP32 microcontroller and powered by a standalone photovoltaic subsystem. Environmental data are transmitted in real time to the Blynk IoT cloud platform for remote monitoring and analysis. The prototype was deployed for four weeks, during which continuous environmental data were successfully recorded. Results indicate that the system captured realistic tropical island environmental variations and maintained stable operation under off-grid conditions. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of renewable-powered IoT environmental monitoring systems for remote island ecosystems and highlight their potential application in long-term ecological and conservation studies.