21 Jul

Delivery & ExCITe-ment

excite2

The weekly classes we taught at Science Leadership Academy’s Beeber campus this past spring took place with the support of Seed Project funding from Drexel University’s ExCITe Center. Last Friday, we set up one of our students’ birdhouses there for visitors to see.

Ninth grade students Abdul and Cinque designed this birdhouse for a cardinal. They incorporated the plastic walls because their research indicated that cardinals prefer open nests, and they thought the plastic would give the house a more open feel. For style, and in representation of Abdul’s religion, they etched an Islamic pattern into the plastic.

excite1

This birdhouse reads the soil moisture levels in the plant beside it. Inside we placed a small egg where the birds would normally nest. If you’re at the ExCITe Center, you can check out the video feed here.

excite4

The ExCITe Center’s funding allowed greenSTEM to develop this year’s birdhouse project and teach students to program Arduinos and apply technology to environmental problems.

This birdhouse is one of four designs created over the course’s 16 weeks. Each design incorporated solar power and datalogging via a wifi connection. In addition, all birdhouses have two rooms—one for birds, and one for electronics. The infrared cameras capture HD video of the birds inside the houses and stream it live to computers inside the schools for several hours each day. They also take temperature and soil moisture readings. The temperature data indicates how comfortable the birds are inside their home, and the soil moisture levels indicate when school gardens require watering. The birdhouses use low-cost technologies such as the Arduino microcontroller and the Raspberry Pi single-board computer.

Because the ExCITe Center’s new birdhouse is hooked up to a steady internet connection and power source, we currently have it streaming during the entirety of the center’s hours of operation.

Philadelphia Water staff collaborated with the Fairmount Water Works, Public Workshop and Jarvus Innovations. Drexel University undergraduates Darya Dragun, Marika Zeldenrust and Alexandra Jones, along with Temple intern Olivia Williams, were key contributors to the project. Plans are already being hatched (no birdhouse pun intended) for next year’s greenSTEM project.

excite3

08 Jul

A Sticky Situation

unnamedOur John Heinz birdhouse has been claimed by the biggest bullies of the bird realm: house sparrows. If you’re not familiar with the species, they are notorious for attacking neighboring birds and spitefully stealing their eggs with no intention of eating them.

Shortly after we installed the box in May, a tree swallow had taken up nesting there and was busy laying eggs and preparing for nesting. However, as noted in our saga, house sparrows have continually taken to harassing our tree swallow residents. They’ve made a habit of taking their eggs, destroying their nests, and, to our dismay, kicking them out of their little bird home.

The last time we visited at the end of June, the house sparrows had filled the birdhouse up to the camera’s level with sticks. This maneuver, according to other birdhouse builders, occurs when house sparrows want to prevent other birds from nesting in boxes in their territory. We returned during the second week of July to clear out the sticks in hopes that another tree swallow would be able to nest in the birdhouse.

 

 

02 Jun

For The Birds: greenSTEM Birdhouses Arrive at Philly Schools

penn_alexander_birdhouse_zoom

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.

PAlexander_drilling (2)

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.

birdhouse_landscape

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.

16 Oct

Northwest Passage

This month, greenSTEM team member Chris Nies is moving to Seattle to join a grunge band 20 years too late accept a job with Amazon. We’re sad to see Chris leave Philly, as he’s been an integral part of this project from our hackathon beginnings. The good news is that Chris will stay involved with greenSTEM and bring our open-source project to the Pacific Northwest. Chris was such an ambassador for Code for Philly and the local tech scene, he got his own bon voyage interview over at Technically Philly.

Chris, you will be missed here. Yes, we are still going to call our sensor kit a Root Kit despite your protests. We’ll leave you with this classic PowerPoint slide from 2013, which during the actual presentation allowed for a third-level Droste effect (Chris standing in front of Chris standing in front of Chris):

05 Dec

Re-branding: greenSTEM Network

greenSTEM logo sketch

Ever since we retired the Solar Sunflower name, we’ve been attempting to come up with a new handle for this project. Many pages and napkins have been scribbled with notes, drawings and words: green, schools, sensor, network, garden, STEM, system, soil, water, stormwater … nothing stuck.

Earlier this week, PWD aquatic biologist Jay Cruz dropped a piece of looseleaf paper on my desk (above); he came up with it while drawing with his daughter. It’s perfect: greenSTEM. We’re going with it, and we’re even going to use a modified version of the logo Jay drew, including the  CFL lightbulb—nice touch.