22 Mar

Smart Green Roof Project: Chapter 2


This spring, greenSTEM is delighted to have guest bloggers! We’re working with the Fairmount Water Works and high school students from SLA Beeber to create a smart green roof model using microcontrollers and sensors.

After researching green roofs and getting some exposure to Arduino programming, we are beginning to build the model. Kevin Magerr, an engineer with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), delivered the skeleton of the model: an acrylic box with different compartments for the soil/plants, electronics, and a water pump. Also joining us was Cara Albright, a PhD candidate with the Villanova Urban Stormwater Partnership. These experts helped guide the model’s development.

  • “We got our green roof model and it looks amazing. Kevin, an EPA engineer, and Cara, a student at Villanova University, helped us make plans for our green roof model.”—Tyheim


One way to monitor the effectiveness of a green roof is to look at how much water it can hold. Above, we plan to install a tube that acts as a well in the system. It will fill up with water and we can use an ultrasonic distance sensor to capture the level of water in the well. We talked about how the sensor works—it uses sound signals that bounce off the surface of the water, operating much the same way a bat uses echolocation to detect its surroundings—and experimented with different sizes of tubes to determine the most accurate measurements.

Terrance and Tyheim also began to wire an LCD display that will create a readout of the water level in real time. All of our prototyping is done with breadboards and jumper wires; once all the elements are in place, we will solder these circuits together to be able to look at multiple sensors and displays: water level, temperature, and soil moisture, for example.
Helpful links:
Ultrasonic (ping) sensor tutorial and code
LCD display tutorial and code
07 May

SLA Beeber Wins Drinking Water Award

Photo Courtesy: Virginia Vassalotti
Photo Courtesy: Melissa Bittner

On Monday, the Schuylkill Action Network gave SLA Beeber students the 2015 Scholastic Drinking Water Award. The 9th and 10th graders have worked with the Philadelphia Water Department’s greenSTEM project  in weekly courses. SLA Beeber was one of three award winning schools across the Schuylkill River Valley. Schools that have won the award in the past have demonstrated exemplary stormwater management practices, or conducted class projects or educational programs pertaining to clean water. SLA Beeber won this year’s award for participating in our Root Kit project,  where they programmed Arduinos and sensors to monitor and record soil moisture data.

The high school hosted an assembly to honor these students for their hard work, which was attended by representatives from the Schuylkill Action Network, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary. Several of the students spoke about their work with the Root Kits and explained what they had learned about the importance of protecting drinking water through green stormwater infrastructure and visits to the Fairmount Water Works during their mini-courses with PWD.

Photo Courtesy: Virginia Vassalotti
Photo Courtesy: Melissa Bittner

The students also demonstrated how their project worked to monitor soil moisture and keep plants healthy. The photo above shows one student showing off a Root Kit they kept at the school, which not only takes soil moisture readings but displays  whether the soil is in a wet or dry state through an Arduino-powered LED matrix the students programmed themselves. The student explained that when the plant needs water, the screen will flash ‘DRY’ and when the soil is adequately moist the screen will read ‘WET.’

Jon Capacasa, director of the the  Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Protection Division, spoke about the importance of collaboration with students and educational facilities to help protect drinking water and presented the group with a plaque commemorating their achievement.