1. Intelligent Weather Station
Intelligent Computing Circuits and Systems
Intelligent Weather Station
Na Gong and Ann Vallie
June 15, 2017

2. Lesson Plan
Goal: In this lesson, we will design an intelligent weather station which can show real-time temperature and humidity, as well as display.

3. Lesson Plan General Lesson Plan:
Introduce the importance of sensing temperature/humidity; (~10 mins)
Introduce the raspberry board and different sensors (~20 mins);
Introduce how to program to measure the temperature/humidity, principle, and teach the coding; (~30 mins);
Continue to split to several hands-on activities and give each group of students one by on (which will be detailed in the following slides) (~1.5 hrs);
Test their developed system in different conditions, such as human body, fan, ice… (~20 mins);
Raspberry board is very powerful – possibility to extend the weather station and research project demonstration (5-10 mins)

4. Introduction - Importance of temp/humidity monitoring
Operating rooms (sensitive instruments)
Greenhouse
Swimming pool (alga grow turn water green)
May use images/videos to relate to the kids

5. Introduction - Importance of Embedded System
An embedded system is combination of computer hardware and software, that is specifically designed for a particular function
May use images/videos to relate to the kids
Video: Embedded Systems:

6. Introduce our device - Raspberry Pi
~20 mins
One of the most popular and powerful embedded programming platform.
Support many different embedded programing languages.
Many accessories and sensors on the market.
Easy to use

7. Temperature/humidity Sensor, principle, and coding (~30 mins)
The Sense HAT temperature sensors can measure temperatures from as low as -40 degrees Celsius up to +120 degrees Celsius
Discuss the principle of temperature sensor
Provided code to get in the input from temperature sensor
Explain how it works
Run the code and check the results
from sense_hat import SenseHat
sense = SenseHat()
sense.clear()
temp = sense.get_temperature()
print(temp)

8. Hands-On Activities Descriptions – ~1.5 hrs
4 hands-on activities are designed. They show the embedded programing step by step.
Hardware boards required for each group (<=3 students in each group):
Raspberry Pi 3
Raspberry Pi Sense HAT

9. Activity 1: Convert Temperature to Fahrenheit
The temperature in the provided code is in Celsius. The students need to convert it into Fahrenheit.
Check the results and test
from sense_hat import SenseHat
sense = SenseHat()
sense.clear()
temp = sense.get_temperature()
temp = temp * 9 /
print(temp)

10. Activity 2: Monitor the temperature
Based on Activity 1, try to use a while loop to monitor the temperature in real time.
Teach loop programming
from sense_hat import SenseHat
sense = SenseHat()
sense.clear()
while True:
temp = sense.get_temperature()
temp = round(temp, 1)
print(temp)

11. Activity 3: Display on LED
Based on Activity 2, try to use LED array to display the temperature.
Principle of LED
Test the results

12. Activity 4: Monitor Humidity
Based on Activity 2 and 3, please program to monitor the temperature.
Will introduce the principle of humidity sensor first
Then the students will work on the programming and run the code
Test the results

13. 1. Extension of weather station 2. Research project demo ~5-10 mins
Embedded Programming is Powerful …
1. Extension of weather station 2. Research project demo ~5-10 mins
camera
Display

14. Outcome
By creating a simple Weather Station with Raspberry Pi, students will learn: 1. the importance of embedded system 2. programming 3. data collection 4. detect inputs from sensors 5. how to process data received from sensors into a meaningful form 6. display