Cormits

Cormits are a small family of autonomous monitoring units first developed in 2010 by the Environmental Science Institute. Each Cormit contains a suite of sensors for temperature, humidity, air quality, and light intensity, along with a low‑power microcontroller that processes data locally. The name derives from the acronym “COntinuous Monitoring and Information Technology System” and was coined to emphasize the units’ continuous deployment capability across remote ecosystems.

The original Cormit prototype was deployed in the Sundarbans mangrove forest to track microclimatic shifts associated with tidal flooding. Subsequent iterations included a miniature solar panel, a radio‑frequency transceiver, and a biodegradable casing to minimize ecological impact. Version 3.0, released in 2017, added a machine‑learning module that can flag anomalous environmental conditions for early warning alerts.

Because of their low cost and modularity, Cormits have been adopted by municipal authorities in New York and Tokyo for urban noise and pollution monitoring, by agricultural stakeholders in the Midwest to optimize irrigation, and by researchers in Antarctica to gather data on permafrost temperature changes. Standard deployment involves clustering 10–50 units on a single data stream, with each cluster managed by a gateway that aggregates observations and forwards them to a cloud database via MQTT protocol.

In addition to environmental monitoring, prototype Cormits equipped with acoustic sensors have been used to study bat echolocation patterns in cave systems. The data are shared under a Creative Commons license to encourage open science collaboration.

Current research focuses on enhancing energy harvesting from wind, improving sensor accuracy under extreme weather, and integrating blockchain technology to secure data provenance. Cormits exemplify a growing trend toward distributed, low‑energy sensor networks that support global environmental data collection while minimizing resource use.