Adventures in Arduino

Using the Sufounder sensor kit to program an Arduino board that can sense and respond to environmental stimuli.

Arduino is an open source electronics platform that is designed to allow the user to create relatively complex electronic circuits with a variety of inputs and outputs that do not require etching circuit boards or soldering, or writing original code to instruct the components how to interact. A variety of companies manufacture hardware that is compatible with the Arduino system; including Sunfounder, which created the sensor kit pictured above.

The kit comes with almost 30 projects with the necessary code available on the Sunfounder website and diagrams showing how to wire the individual sensors up to their Uno 3 motherboard. Many of these sensors; like those that detect temperature, gas, humidity, sound, and light could have numerous environmental applications when used in conjunction with outputs like the LCD screen, buzzer, and various lights.

I attempted 2 of the projects included in the manual, although I was unfortunately not able to get either one to work the way I wanted them to.

The first project was getting an LCD screen to show a pre-written message, like so:

Unfortunately, I was seemingly unable to upload the code from the Arduino app on my computer, to the Uno 3 board via USB.

As you can see, the display is on, but it doesn't know what to show.

I also wanted to try to set up an analogue temperature sensor, to detect a change in temperature based on the activation of a thermistor. I don't really understand why this one didn't work, but here is a photo of it not doing what it's supposed to.

While my attempts here were minimally successful, I hope this demonstrates the myriad potential ways which we can use Arduino technology to monitor environmental factors. Arduino and other single-board computers and microcontrollers bring computing to a modular format, small scale, and low price; which combined with their relatively low barrier to entry allows for flexible use in research and the real world. For example: scientists at Liverpool John Moores University in Britain have used an Arduino board to collate chemical and GPS data to create a system that analyzes emissions from a moving vehicle in real time.