The coastal monitoring system Chispita operational around three kilometers offshore Tongoy, Chile, north of Santiago provides near-real-time data, with a delay of about 15 minutes after data collection. Chispita is a part of a research project between the Universidad de Concepción and Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Áridas (CEAZA). The author completed its programming and integration and also oversaw its deployment with CEAZA marine biologist Ricardo Rodriguez and other researchers. Campbell Scientific Inc. (Logan, Utah) provided the monitoring station's atmospheric sensors. It uses a 05106 Wind Monitor-MA, a CS1O6 barometric pressure sensor and an HMP5O temperature and humidity sensor. The system has been programmed to collect atmospheric data every 1.5 minutes and water data every 15 minutes. The data collection is done in a scheduled manner using Campbell Scientific's LoggerNet software. Data are then processed by some Perl scripts for preprocessing prior to being saved into a database.