Renn strapped an Arduino Mini to one of his surfboards and and connected it to a network of sensors. These were housed in a waterproof pad before and the whole unit was sent out to sea.

What happens when an engineer builds a smart garden? This Arduino-powered system automates watering while collecting real-time data on soil moisture, temperature, and sunlight. From sensor ...

The Arduino is programmed to mimic a keyboard, so the datalogging is achieved by allowing the Arduino to ‘type’ the data into an open Excel spreadsheet.

It is an Arduino compatible board (hardware, not footprint) based on the ATMEGA1284P which can be programmed to collect and post data to internet logging sites such as Thingspeak or Xively.