Today we introduced some weather specific data gathering concepts and wrote a little program to read the temperature from three of the old eBlock thermocouples hooked to a Spider. We also went outside and recorded GPS waypoints with a Panda II. We plotted the waypoints on Google maps. When the kids saw their lat/long numbers turn into a satellite image of where they were standing on their playground, they went bonkers.
I’m doing weekly sessions with them until we have the remote station built and installed. I’ll update this topic as we go.
…and it’s interesting to me ! I have been slowly acquiring sensors and preparing for a netmf weather station to replace my failed Fine Offset one, using nRF24L01+'s for wireless, a BMP180 baro, and SHT11 temp/hum, all prototyped on Cerberus today but intending to use Cerb40 for production.
@ ransomhall - that’s fantastic! I’m not sure who’s having more fun, though, you or the kids
This reminds me of the science fair project I built in high school - an [analog] anemometer and wind vane weather station. Mostly because I understood it and could describe what every component on it did, I took home the top prize and 3rd in the region. I’d like to build another weather station some day using Gadgeteer.
I challenge everyone in the community to get involved and bring Gadgeteer to their local schools/community in some way. I’m setting up a hands-on table at our local science center for Engineering Day next weekend. If you don’t want to do an entire course like ransomhall is, then look for shorter events such as this.
Yelling? Nah, call it exuberance. I did have to talk quite loud to be heard over the din of excited kiddos. I let the teacher be the bad cop when it got too loud, though
@ architect - that kid was totally jazzed the whole time. He’s super bright and was doing coordinate math with the GPS data we collected. Another amazing fact - at the age of 9 he discovered a wild orchid in Vermont that is now named after him.
