Abstract: A compact sensor system with intelligent processing capabilities to reduce power usage and transmission bandwidth requirements is disclosed. The compact sensor system comprises a housing containing at least one sensor, processor, and processor readable media. The processor is connected to a circuit board, which is mounted to the interior of the housing. The processor executes software instructions stored in the processor readable media causing the processor to receive and analyze data from the sensor, the processing including identifying bits in the sensor data, analyzing the bits using segmentation, and describing the bits using a data representation. After processing the data, the processor may transmit the data, selected portions of the data, or a confirmation signal to an external system.