Stations: persistent sources of observations
Learn how a station gives repeated observations a stable identity without assuming every station looks like a weather box on a pole.
Why this matters
When observations arrive over time, you need a persistent way to say which place, device, platform, or installation produced them. That identity makes comparison, maintenance, provenance, and connection management possible.
Learn it
A station can be a fixed sensor installation, camera, phone used in a persistent role, buoy, pier site, vehicle, gateway, or research platform. A station record can hold location, vertical context, ownership, status, connection information, sensors, and source identifiers. Observations remain separate records linked back to the station.
Work through an example
One shoreline station may have a camera and temperature sensor. The station identity stays stable while thousands of images and temperature observations accumulate.
Station
├─ identity + location/status
├─ sensor A
├─ camera B
└─ observations over timePractice
- 1Describe a station in your own project without naming any vendor.
- 2List what stays stable about it and what changes from observation to observation.
- 3Decide whether a moving vehicle should be modeled as a station/source, asset, or both in your project.
What to watch for
Do not store every observation directly on the station record. Persistent identity and time-varying observations solve different problems.
Where this takes you
Stations are the conceptual bridge to future Quick Starts for building observation platforms, including the planned Android observation-station project.