Garden TOOLS PD - Module 5

Erin Ingram Author

01/09/2023 Added

3 Plays

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In this module, we will provide a brief introduction to programming the BBC micro:bit as environmental sensors to measure light, temperature, and soil moisture levels.

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[00:00:02.070]Welcome back
[00:00:02.903]to the Garden Tools Professional Development Series.
[00:00:05.010]In today's module we are gonna talk
[00:00:07.200]about coding environmental sensors.
[00:00:09.690]I wanna give you a little sense
[00:00:11.250]of the why and the how that we do this,
[00:00:15.900]before you get started with youth.
[00:00:19.980]So first up, why do we code and use environmental sensors
[00:00:24.300]in a garden setting?
[00:00:25.560]It largely has to do with the fact
[00:00:27.810]that it's a really good practice
[00:00:29.340]to start getting students to notice and wonder
[00:00:32.130]in these spaces.
[00:00:33.600]And so that's one of our main goals.
[00:00:35.460]And the micro:bit enables students
[00:00:39.120]to start doing this questioning on their own.
[00:00:45.090]So, what does that look like in practice?
[00:00:47.730]I'm gonna pull an activity
[00:00:49.200]that's actually from the Garden Tools lesson set,
[00:00:52.110]and this should give you a little window
[00:00:54.390]into what this might look like.
[00:00:56.280]So the first thing that I want you to do is
[00:00:57.900]I want you to think about weather without using any tools,
[00:01:01.140]like you can't use a thermometer,
[00:01:02.400]you can't use the weather channel.
[00:01:04.920]I want you to just describe the weather outside today.
[00:01:09.270]Maybe you're thinking that it's sunny or it's cloudy.
[00:01:11.820]Maybe you're thinking it's cold or it's warm.
[00:01:14.190]Maybe you're thinking it's humid or it's really dry.
[00:01:17.190]Regardless of whatever descriptors that you use
[00:01:20.730]to describe your weather,
[00:01:22.560]it's generally going to be using words and not numbers.
[00:01:27.720]Now, imagine that I give you a BBC micro:bit
[00:01:30.480]that measures one of the following things.
[00:01:32.520]I don't even need you to be the one who's coded these.
[00:01:36.540]I can have coded them and then hand it off to you.
[00:01:39.330]It could be light level, it could be temperature,
[00:01:41.130]it could be soil moisture.
[00:01:44.910]You then go outside and explore.
[00:01:46.950]You look for answers
[00:01:50.700]to the following two questions
[00:01:52.290]by taking measurements for five minutes.
[00:01:54.210]The first question being,
[00:01:55.290]are conditions the same everywhere?
[00:01:58.260]And what are the most extreme conditions that you can find?
[00:02:03.900]My last step in this activity would be to bring you inside
[00:02:06.387]and to do a share and compare.
[00:02:08.370]Imagine that you're comparing those measurements
[00:02:10.590]with others.
[00:02:11.640]Maybe we use a graphing program like Excel,
[00:02:14.820]or Google Sheets to start actually creating a graph.
[00:02:18.300]Or, maybe we just go through the step
[00:02:20.610]of writing those different numbers on post it notes,
[00:02:23.190]and putting all of the high levels together
[00:02:25.470]and all of the low levels together and looking for patterns.
[00:02:28.320]How might visualizing that data
[00:02:31.110]and looking for patterns lead
[00:02:32.700]to interesting, noticing and wondering
[00:02:35.880]about the garden?
[00:02:39.480]That's what a lesson might look like.
[00:02:41.490]Now, imagine having a conversation with students
[00:02:43.440]about the first way they described the weather,
[00:02:46.020]it's hot, or it's cold.
[00:02:48.450]And now imagine bringing numbers into that.
[00:02:50.490]Well, is it hot to everyone?
[00:02:52.594]Mm, maybe not.
[00:02:53.640]Maybe your idea of hot
[00:02:54.750]and my idea of hot are very different.
[00:02:56.880]But if we can start bringing in numbers,
[00:02:58.770]we can start getting at the idea of precisions.
[00:03:01.620]Also, that we can be comparing
[00:03:03.720]what this year's students say
[00:03:06.900]about the weather on this date
[00:03:08.910]compared to next year's or the next year's.
[00:03:10.830]So we can look at how science and math allow us
[00:03:13.980]to start looking at prediction.
[00:03:17.580]So, now that I've talked a little bit about the why
[00:03:20.280]behind why we use environmental sensors,
[00:03:24.840]I wanna walk you through the basics of how we go
[00:03:28.920]about coding these three different environmental sensors
[00:03:31.740]because the code looks
[00:03:33.210]and functions very much the same for each.
[00:03:39.060]So, if I show you these three codes,
[00:03:42.060]you don't need to know what any of them do.
[00:03:44.580]Just look at like the colors and how they're built.
[00:03:48.300]What are some similarities that you notice?
[00:03:54.990]So, you might notice that in all cases the code functions
[00:03:58.920]to do two basic things.
[00:04:00.720]One, it functions to show you a graph,
[00:04:03.390]and two, it functions to show a number
[00:04:05.580]when the "A" button is pressed.
[00:04:08.580]So, if you take a look at this, show a graph,
[00:04:11.760]can you guess
[00:04:15.319]which part of the code functions to do that?
[00:04:19.260]If you guess that it's this purple section
[00:04:21.810]in everyone where it says, "plot bar graph of",
[00:04:25.320]and then it's different for everyone "up to",
[00:04:28.560]and then a number that's different for everyone.
[00:04:32.190]And then show a number when "A" button is pressed,
[00:04:37.020]which part of the code actually functions to do this?
[00:04:41.940]If you look at this kind of teal colored section that says,
[00:04:45.997]"If button A is pressed, then show number",
[00:04:50.910]and then an example of a variable that it wants to show.
[00:04:55.590]So, again, these are the two things
[00:04:58.920]that every single environmental sensor
[00:05:02.280]that you're gonna code with students is
[00:05:03.840]all gonna look really similar.
[00:05:08.430]But the difference between all of them is
[00:05:10.620]that what is measured and how it's communicated depends
[00:05:13.440]on the details that you provide in the program.
[00:05:18.660]This is a really great example of abstraction.
[00:05:21.390]If you remember back
[00:05:22.260]to learning about computational thinking,
[00:05:24.570]abstraction is one of those things
[00:05:25.890]where you take away all the details that are specific
[00:05:28.470]and you leave everything else.
[00:05:30.840]In computer language,
[00:05:31.920]it makes it easy to make a single program
[00:05:34.380]that you can kind of interchange details
[00:05:36.510]in order to measure different things.
[00:05:38.160]So the sensor functions the same way,
[00:05:40.110]showing you a graph and showing you a number
[00:05:42.090]when you press the button "A",
[00:05:43.560]and depending on the details you give it,
[00:05:45.540]it'll do that with either light,
[00:05:48.360]temperature or soil moisture.
[00:05:51.990]So, it looks a little something like this.
[00:05:54.900]You've got your basic setup.
[00:05:57.450]Forever, it's gonna give you this code running.
[00:06:01.860]It's gonna have always a part of the code
[00:06:04.680]that's gonna be intended to show you a graph.
[00:06:07.050]You are gonna choose whatever input you wanna put in,
[00:06:09.810]and that's either the light level input
[00:06:12.780]the temperature input, or in the case of soil moisture,
[00:06:15.330]and this is the one that's slightly different
[00:06:19.380]because you need to create a variable called reading
[00:06:22.920]or called something,
[00:06:24.060]that is matched to soil moisture for this.
[00:06:28.200]Then you need to put in what is the maximum number
[00:06:31.530]that you want your code to graph up to.
[00:06:35.280]For light level, the most that it can measure up to is 255,
[00:06:39.660]for temperature, the number that I would advise
[00:06:43.530]that you use is 37.7.
[00:06:45.840]Remember that you are measuring in Celsius
[00:06:48.630]when you measure with the BBC micro:bit.
[00:06:51.510]So 37.7 is about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
[00:06:55.950]So, it's a nice zero to a hundred degrees
[00:07:01.511]on your graph, if you use this as your top number.
[00:07:04.050]And lastly, soil moisture can measure up to 1023.
[00:07:11.490]If you need help with any of these, don't worry.
[00:07:14.640]You're not alone.
[00:07:16.293]The first resource that we have,
[00:07:19.800]there are tutorials that are available
[00:07:22.050]on the MakeCode for micro:bit coding platform
[00:07:25.770]for light level and soil moisture,
[00:07:27.840]that will literally walk you step by step
[00:07:29.940]through instructions on how to build the code,
[00:07:32.490]and instructions for like how to build
[00:07:36.630]or hook up the alligator clips
[00:07:40.080]and the nails for the soil moisture sensor.
[00:07:45.390]We also have complete guides
[00:07:47.970]on how to code each of these different environmental sensors
[00:07:52.740]and some additional ones.
[00:07:54.870]So you can check out our how-to coding guides
[00:07:56.610]on our website.
[00:07:58.920]There are a couple ways you can access those instructions.
[00:08:01.440]One, you could just read the written instructions
[00:08:03.600]with diagrams.
[00:08:05.010]Two, you could watch.
[00:08:06.060]There are video tutorials
[00:08:07.320]that will lead you step by step on what it looks like,
[00:08:09.870]or, you can just download the finished code directly.
[00:08:13.800]And I wanna show you a little bit of what that looks like.
[00:08:19.170]So as I mentioned, you can navigate directly
[00:08:22.800]to the 'How-to Coding Guides' link on our website
[00:08:26.250]for the Garden Tools Project.
[00:08:28.920]If you scroll down, you are going to see
[00:08:34.200]the three different environmental sensors are available
[00:08:37.560]for light intensity, soil moisture, and temperature.
[00:08:42.330]You're also going to see that there are...
[00:08:44.910]If you click on this top title, it will open up a Google Doc
[00:08:49.590]that's going to walk you through step by step with a picture
[00:08:52.980]of what that code looks like.
[00:08:55.470]If you click "download the finished code"
[00:08:58.410]I've already created the code for you,
[00:09:00.900]and you can simply download it.
[00:09:03.360]You can also watch a video tutorial
[00:09:06.630]that will walk you step by step
[00:09:08.040]through actually building the code in the platform.
[00:09:13.470]So, I hope that these resources are helpful to you,
[00:09:17.760]and that you will practice coding each
[00:09:20.580]of these environmental sensors,
[00:09:22.170]so that you're ready to use them with youth.

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Tags:
Garden TOOLS
Growable
K-12
Professional Development
School Garden

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Garden TOOLS PD - Module 5

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