After weighing up the benefits of both ways of doing our project we have decided that the use of Arduino, though exciting, is over complex and that collecting the data using a laptop will allow us to focus on the visual element of our project.

After various inquiries using ardiuno for this project is possible however the original intention and motivation to have a number of small units left unattended is not achievable.

I will continue to post regarding Arduino as I would like to do a project using it at some point in the future.