IoT for Sustainability

The team’s goal is to use Intel Edison Embedded Processor and Sensor kits to create a summer workshop project for Senior High-school and Freshmen Undergraduate Engineering students on a theme titled, "Internet of Things for Sustainability".

Problem Statement
Internet of Things(IoT) is the intermingling of the physical world with technology, particularly relating networking. This field is rapidly expanding with self-driving cars and remote control home security systems being prime examples. This new wave of technological integration is making lives easier by automating more tasks and allowing remote control of appliances and other structures that normally are not tethered to technology. This creates a demand for a workforce of well trained, highly educated individuals to innovate and secure this technology.

Proposed Solution
We propose creating a Summer camp to encourage high school students to study Internet of Things in college. In the camp, students will have fun and learn about programming and micro controllers. This early exposure will encourage students to study Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. Thus, ensuring a supply of future professionals to work in the rapidly changing landscape known as Internet of Things.

Specification
Here is the outline of the tutorial that is currently planned for the Summer Camp.

DAY 1: This day the students will get started to the Intel Galileo board and start working on an blinking an LED attached through the Grove shield kit. After this point, students will be familiar with the connecting components through the shield interface and will be able to compile programs on the Intel Galileo. Then the students will begin a tutorial on called "Nightlight". This tutorial will teach students about the differences between digital and analog signals. This tutorial will be the student's first try at reading sensor values and performing an action based on those sensor values. The students will further concrete these skills in the 3rd tutorial of the day "Thermostat". In this project students will start by creating a simple thermostat. However, the students will add features to the board to make it "smart". Some features will be making custom displays based on temperatures or ranges of temperatures.

DAY 2: This day students will start by reviewing basic concepts of the first day and further reinforcing them. By the end of day 2, students will be comfortable with the Intel Galileo board and will have experience with a variety of sensors. First, the students will build a "Soil Monitor". This tutorial will show students how to monitor the change in soil moisture and take simple actions like displaying moisture levels on an LCD display. The second tutorial of the day will show the students how to build an Allergy/Dust Monitoring System. This system will monitor allergens and general air quality and report whether the air quality is good, fair, or poor. The last tutorial similarly will monitor environmental factors in the form of UV radiation. This project will display recommended sun exposure based on UV radiation.

DAY 3: Day 3 starts by building on the UV radiation tutorial by adding a smart phone interface for the display of UV values and recommended sun exposure. The rest of the day will be spent on a tutorial called "Quiet Down". This tutorial monitors noise level and will display to the user the noise level of a room and display a different colored LEDs for the noise level of the room (i.e. RED=loud, Yellow=moderately loud, Green=quiet). This will be mapped to a smart phone application that takes values from the user like "how noisy is the room?". Based on user feedback, the application will change when certain LED colors are activated. This day will get students introduced to the concept of machine learning and adding remote capability to IoT projects.

DAY 4 & 5: The final two days of the camp students will be encouraged to work on one or two of the following larger project ideas. These tutorials will focus on having students apply all of the lessons from the camp thus far. "Cooler Window" - based on temperature outside and inside, this system makes a decision to open the window or turn on the air-conditioning. "Watering System" - this project builds on the "Soil Monitor" tutorial but takes input from the user about plant health daily. This system will correct when it is asked to be watered based on input. "Weather Monitoring System" - monitors the values outside like UV radiation, temperature, and humidity. Then it displays these values and will warn the user as to what clothing is appropriate for the day. Corrects based on user input of comfort level. "Home Security System" - monitors a window or door and updates a mobile application based on when the window/door is opened and closed. The security system can be armed. When armed, a alarm will go off when the door/window is opened.

Team Members
Starting left to right: Matthew Kirkland, David Mortin, Daniel Gentile, Maxwell Gilmore

Deliverables

 * A GitHub page containing introductory IoT tutorials
 * Documentation for future iterations of the project