02 Jun

For The Birds: greenSTEM Birdhouses Arrive at Philly Schools

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Last year, greenSTEM focused on building Root Kits so that Philadelphia students could monitor the soil moisture levels in their school gardens and gain an understanding of water-related issues in an urban environment. However, the soil moisture data was pretty predictable. When it rained, the moisture readings went up. The soil would gradually dry and the readings would hover at low levels until the next big shower.  The project needed something to capture the students’ attentions and keep them checking in with the data. We also needed to get the sensors off the ground and off the grid.

Somewhere along the line the idea arrived: “What if we paired this environmental data collection with something else? What if we adapted it into the form of a solar-powered birdhouse?” Using the birdhouse as our sensor housing, we could now offer students a live video stream of birds nesting inside the house as well.

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And so, with the summer sun shining, we successfully installed our first birdhouses at two Philadelphia schools. On May 28, 7th grade students at Penn Alexander in West Philadelphia helped us assemble the birdhouse that now sits in their vegetable garden. We brought the pre-cut pieces of the birdhouse to the schoolyard and helped science teacher Stephanie Kearney’s students use cordless drills to make pilot holes and screw the pieces in place. They also took a look around the schoolyard with urban bird expert Tony Croasdale of Wild West Philly. With binoculars in hand, they found a few nests! PAlexander_birdwatching (2)

The next day, at Cook-Wissahickon Elementary School in Manayunk, we assembled a similar birdhouse with 7th graders from teacher Jose Ramos’ class and placed it in the school’s meadow. With both installations, we explained the purpose and components of the birdhouses to the students.

Cook_Wiss_crew (2)The first thing one notices about the birdhouse is the shiny black solar panel on the rooftop. The panel is placed facing south at a 40-degree angle, mimicking Philadelphia’s approximate 40-degree latitude on Earth, in order to optimize absorption of solar rays. This solar panel is attached to the birdhouse to charge the battery inside that provides power for the birdhouses’ camera and sensors.

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The battery is located in one of the birdhouse’s two compartments. The bottom floor is a living space for the birds, but the top floor acts as a storage compartment for the technology that records video of the birds and takes soil moisture readings below. Battery-powered in the tech compartment are a Sleepy Pi and a Raspberry Pi. The Sleepy Pi, coded in Arduino, allows us to control when the video camera in the birdhouse turns on and off, cycling to conserve energy. The Sleepy Pi connects to the soil moisture sensor and a temperature sensor that take readings every hour and transmit the data via wifi to data.greenSTEMnetwork.org. Meanwhile, a PiNoir camera creates a video stream of the birds inside, and an infrared LED lights up the interior of the birdhouse just enough for us to see our subjects. The video stream can be viewed by students on their school’s network.

We’ll document all the technical details and challenges in the coming weeks, both on the blog and through sharing code and schematics. But for now, we’re hoping to get birds nesting in the new houses before school lets out.

All of this would not have been possible without assistance from the School District of Philadelphia (who are partly responsible for this whole project) and IT guru George Li, who set up wifi networks for both birdhouses. Special thanks to Rachel Odoroff from the Fairmount Water Works for her teaching expertise and involvement in the project.

03 Jun

Waterlogged

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Mysteriously, the sensors at Nebinger and Cook-Wissahickon elementary schools stopped transmitting data late last week. A trip out to each school’s garden quickly revealed the problem: waterlogged Root Kits, with circuit boards and battery cases floating in water. Weren’t these things supposed to be waterproofed? Not against last week’s heavy rain, apparently. We have a hunch as to where the water is getting in; students at SLA Beeber will conduct an immersion test (i.e., put the case in a bucket of water) to see where the water is leaking in and recommend fixes. But for now, the Root Kits are sidelined and drying out, and we’ll test the circuit boards to see if they still work. Check out the futility of the dessicant pack in the photo below:waterlogged_RootKit2

16 Apr

Student Design Competition

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Last week, judges met at the Fairmount Water Works to view the submissions for the greenSTEM Challenge, a student design competition to create artistic, original housings for the sensors set to be installed at three Philadelphia schools later this month. Competition was fierce—the student team at Greenfield who submitted the zombie head design deserves an honorable mention—but we selected three winning designs: a sword in the stone (Greenfield), a spider (Nebinger), and a futuristic light-up dome (Cook-Wissahickon). The winners are below; the next step is to gather the students for a day of building.

Greenfield Elementary: Zoe, Alexei, Jordan

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Written Description:

Over the device we will put a block of foam that hardens for more durability. We will make a sword handle out of water bottles filled with paper and pipes. We will spray orange, brown, and silver paint on the pipes. We will also spray paint the foam silver. The end result will be an homage to the classic story of King Arthur. The wires will come out of the foam. The device will be obscured in a nice cover that complements the color of its surroundings and the storytelling we grew up with. The foam will be covered in dirt and rocks to blend in with the ground.

Nebinger Elementary: Amir

NEBINGER_design

Written Description:

My project is a tarantula. I will have the device inside a Pelican 1010 casing with straws. I will put the wires inside the straws and have the other end connected to the head of the tarantula. I made it easy for you to figure it out in these pictures.

NEBINGER_design2 NEBINGER_design3

Cook-Wissahickon Elementary: Jonathan, Jhalil, Sean

COOK WISSAHICKON_design

Written Description:

We will have a plastic dome around the data-sending unit with LED lights inside the top of the dome. We will use battery packs to power the LED lights [to indicate] when it needs to be watered. We will use a circuit board to turn on the LED lights because it will be hooked up to the sensors.

Congratulations to the students! And thank you to the judges: Beth Miller (Community Design Collaborative), Alex Gilliam (Public Workshop), Lisa Wool (Partnership for the Delaware Estuary) Ellen Freedman Schultz (Fairmount Water Works), and Tiffany Ledesma-Groll and Jay Cruz (Philadelphia Water Department).

19 Mar

Root Kit Construction

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With the installation of sensors at four Philadelphia schools about a month away, it was time to build some additional Root Kits. Version 1.0 is housed in a Pelican 1010, a $10 waterproof case normally used for stashing your cell phone during whitewater rafting trips or something. We used a half-inch drill bit to drill out the three holes for the soil moisture sensor cables, and the cables are secured to the case with PG7 cable glands (about $3 for a pack of 10) that you can tighten by hand.

A few words about drilling: This was a two-person job; one person steadying the left side of the case and the other drilling, slowly and with constant pressure, the three holes. At first, we experimented with drilling pilot holes with smaller bits and moving up to the half-inch bit, but by the end we just did the job with the half-inch bit from start to finish. (We haven’t yet cracked the plastic on the Pelican cases, but have definitely destroyed a variety of less-sturdy plastic components while drilling.) It was difficult to align the holes and make it look pretty. The drill bit walks. This is not of great concern, however, since these cases will eventually be covered by students’ creative and artistic designs.

Speaking of which, students at Greenfield, Nebinger, and Cook-Wissahickon elementary schools are currently designing Root Kit housings for the design competition. The deadline for submissions is April 4, and more info and downloadable packets and drawing templates are here.

We’re in the process of assembling a complete set of instructions for assembling the Root Kit and plan to work with students at Science Leadership Academy’s Beeber campus this spring to be the first large-scale manufacturers of these sensor kits.