Soldering

I received my sensor and found that I needed to solder 10 cables onto 1/4″ x 1/8″ rectangle.  Each cable had to be soldered onto its only area and none of them could be touching.  Being my first time soldering this proved to be an extremely difficult task.  The first two or three went fine, but after that it got crowded and not having the steadiest had didn’t help.  I managed to get them all attached, but in the end it just didn’t work.  As a plan B we took an already made citizen kit that used the same sensor and attempted to work with that and try to get it to work.  Unfortunately that is as far as I got and didn’t manage to load a script or see if the sensor could actually detect any pollution in the air.

 

 

final boards

final_boards

Air pollution is a common problem and can cause health problems.  The freeway running through La Verne is a major source of pollution for that area.  The CO and NO emissions from vehicles can be reduced using systems of vegetation and technical filters.  This sets up for a landscape that filters and reveals the invisible flows of pollution in not only the air, but also water.  Weaving the vegetative and technical filters allows for a multifunctional landscape that acknowledges both air and water pollution.  Dense forests can be created close to the freeway with selective trees that absorb the greatest amounts of CO and NO and then slowly scattering them as it moves further from the freeway while changing the type of pollution filtration to particulate matter or even ozone.  Several water collection, filtration, and conveyance systems can be set up to create a treatment train that moves and cleans water before it is stored or moved to the existing creek.

SoCal Maker Con

SoCal Maker Con is a large event that allows people to display different types of technology.  Some of the things found at the event included 3D printing, drones, and robots.  This was my first appearance at Maker Con and it was an interesting one.  At the event I was surprised at the wide range of people attending.  I was most impressed with the children attending and their knowledge of the subject.    I had no idea that Arduino was so widely known.  After  setting up the table and laying everything out I thought it would be a slow day with most people passing by.  I was wrong.  Several people were interested in what we were doing and after about and hour my voice was beginning to fade because I was talking to so many people.  Being at this event also helped me to further my understanding of the Seeeduino and Arduino.

Project Description

The sensor I selected to attempt to attach to the Seeudino Salker is the MICS 4515. This sensor detects CO2 and NO2 from the pollution of automobiles. After some research and some common sense a lot of the air pollution comes from the freeway running through the site. In conjunction with knowing where the majority of air pollution comes from, I looked at wind patterns to determine how it will move across the site. A couple of the major wind patterns looked at were the Santa Anna Winds and the off shore winds. The majority of the time the wind moves from NE to SW or vice versa. These little bits of information along with existing site conditions will help to define my design strategies

First Attempt

This was the first attempt at creating circuits using the Seeeduino Stalker kit and Arduino. Using an instruction card as a guide we were able to take a breadboard and, based on the instructions, different resistors, LED lights and jumper cables. At first glance at the instruction card it seemed confusting, but after about 5 minutes it became very clear and easy as to how to construct the circuit. Once the circuit was built and attached to the Seeeduino Stalker we hooked it up to a laptop. Using Arduino and an already composed sketch we were able to make the LED’s light up. In this case the LED’s blinked in a pattern. Going through the sketch in Arduino we were able to locate the time interval between the LED’s lighting up. By adjusting this value we could increase or decrease the amount of time it took for them to blink. We experimented with values from half a second up to one minute.