Project: µSense

 
 

Team Members:

Jeaime Powell, Project Lead

Summary:

The human senses provide methods to both observe and understand the world around you. Through the use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology and sensors, those observations can be collected and analyzed to develop data-based understanding of your world.

µSense (pronounced micro-sense) will be a low-cost, opensource, open-data, and open-hardware device that will utilize the capabilities of a Lora enabled microcontroller device coupled with an atmospheric sensor to monitor the environmental conditions in a micro-climate. The platform will target temperature, relative humidity, pressure, and air quality initially using the BME680 sensor. The monitored location could range from an indoor room to an outside public space. The power of the device comes from the low barrier to entry nature of the project. It will allow interested persons to easily create and deploy devices in a DIY format.

The intent of the project was to aide both environmental scientists and students by providing highly scalable data loggers while also generating an educational curriculum that would allow middle/high school students and community members access to an opensource, open-hardware, and open-data platform through which the participant could experience the full process of environmental data collection and analysis. In short, provide a means by which citizen science, education, and research link in such a way as to generate data-driven connections to the environment.

During the Capsule Hackathon, a working prototype of µSense was created. The prototype collected measurements of temperature, relative humidity, pressure, and volatile organic compounds in one-minute cycles using an attached BME680 Bosch Sensor connected through an I2C bus to a Heltec WiFi Lora 32 v2 Arduino microcontroller (https://www.bosch-sensortec.com/products/environmental-sensors/gas-sensors-bme680/, https://heltec-automation-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/esp32/wifi_lora_32/hardware_update_log.html#v2). The associated code was written in C++ during the challenge.

Collected data was then translated into byte-based payloads and transmitted to The Things Network (TTN) using LoRa radio transmission and the LORAWAN protocol (https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/architecture.html). The Arduino-lmic library implementation was used as the bases for data transmission using the attached LoRa radio over SPI (https://github.com/matthijskooijman/arduino-lmic).

Once on the TTN platform, a JavaScript-based decoder was written to output the payload into a standard JSON object. An integration was then added to the TTN platform which utilized an API to uplink the collected data into MATLAB’s ThingSpeak platform (https://thingspeak.com/channels/1086343). The JSON object was then parsed and plotted for a general visual representation of the data set. When completed all code was then uploaded to a GitHub repository with associated images and diagrams (https://github.com/jeaimehp/microsense).

Materials that were developed over the weekend :

µSense node

• Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V2

• BME680 Sensor

• Arduino C++ Code

The Things Network Application - https://microsense.data.thethingsnetwork.org/

• API that captures device data

• Javascript Byte-based Payload decoder to JSON object ThingSpeak Channel - https://thingspeak.com/channels/1086343

• API Integration to accept TTN derived JSON object

• Plots of the data received Github Project page - https://github.com/jeaimehp/microsense

microsensewithbme680.JPG
working_lora_helloworld.png

Sustainable Development Goals:

  • Good Health and Well-Being

  • Quality Education

  • Sustainable Cities and Communities

  • Climate Action

Skills & Resources Needed:

  • Pedagogy and Curriculum Specialists

  • IoT Tinkerers

  • Programmers (C++ or Python)

  • Cloud API specialist

  • DIY Electronics Persons

  • Modelers

  • Marketing Specialists

µSense requires a swath of skill sets that cut across multiple disciplines. Outside tuning the code to add air quality index, webserver interface, and automated addition to The Things Network educational and business resources are needed. To create a curriculum that could be implemented into school systems the addition of a technology teacher would be needed. To make the product a direct order kit would require persons that are familiar with such processes. Lastly, calibration and longevity studies would be needed on any production-like kit to be openly distributed.

Post-Capsule Goals:

  • University Partnership or Collaboration

  • Hobby Project

EducationGuest UserUnited States