Environmental monitoring has created a demand for electronic sensing systems that can be installed in a "set and forget" manner. To meet this demand, electronic sensing systems need be designed for maximal battery life and minimal power consumption. Presented is a hardware-software co-designed wireless sensor and digital sign that power gates subsystems when not in use, utilizes low power modes offered by the microcontroller, and implements an algorithm for data transmission utilizing a hybrid lossless compression technique to reduce the number of bytes for transmission to save communication power. Furthermore, a switched-capacitor converter is proposed for providing voltage levels needed to control an electronic ink display for the digital sign. The developed system can achieve a battery life up to 12 months from a 2500mAh single cell lithium-ion battery and a reduction in environmental data transmission size by up to 37% using the proposed hybrid lossless compression technique.