This paper presents a low-cost Internet-of-Things (IoT) telemetry and alerting system for monitoring and protecting sea turtle nests. The proposed platform integrates temperature, humidity, vibration, ultrasonic proximity, and ambient light sensors into an autonomous sensing node based on the ESP8266 microcontroller. Measurements are transmitted wirelessly to a cloud backend for real-time visualization and rule-based alert generation. The system is designed to support continuous nest-level monitoring and rapid response to environmental and anthropogenic threats such as overheating, artificial light exposure during hatching, and physical disturbance. In contrast to approaches that require extensive historical datasets or machine-learning models, the proposed solution employs transparent threshold-based rules that provide reliable operation without training data. The platform emphasizes low cost, ease of deployment, and scalability, making it suitable for large-scale conservation deployments across multiple nesting sites. It provides conservation practitioners with actionable situational awareness that complements existing field-based monitoring and protection strategies.
Skrivanos et al. (Wed,) studied this question.