The Climate-ecological Observatory for Arctic Tundra (COAT) is a long-term research initiative for real time detection, documentation and understanding of climate impacts on terrestrial arctic ecosystems. COAT is a collaboration of several Norwegian research institutions under the umbrella of FRAM - High North Centre for Climate and Environment. The study areas include the bioclimatic extremes of the terrestrial Arctic, low arctic coast of Norway and high arctic Svalbard. An important part of the observatory is sensors placed in the environment to observe wildlife and plants. Current sensor packages are fairly robust and work well for small to medium scale deployment. For larger scales, however, there is a clear demand for better management and control. This paper summarises some current experiences with deploying cameras and some of the challenges that we intend to address in an up-coming project where we aim to increase the capability of scientists to handle a larger number and diversity of sensor types and variation in deployment while minimising human traffic and impact in the monitored environments. To build this type of observatory at increasing scales, we expect to use robust programming architectures, open modular sensor packages, on-line processing, monitoring and configuration management and a range of communication technologies to cope with variations in connectivity.