Synopses & Reviews
After the devastating tsunami in 2011, DYIers in Japan built their own devices to detect radiation levels, then posted their finding on the Internet. Right now, thousands of people worldwide are tracking environmental conditions with monitoring devices theyve built themselves. You can do it too!
This inspiring guide shows you how to use Arduino to create gadgets for measuring noise, weather, electromagnetic interference (EMI), water purity, and more. Youll also learn how to collect and share your own data, and you can experiment by creating your own variations of the gadgets covered in the book. If youre new to DIY electronics, the first chapter offers a primer on electronic circuits and Arduino programming.
- Use a special microphone and amplifier to build a reliable noise monitor
- Create a gadget to detect energy vampires: devices that use electricity when theyre “off”
- Examine water purity with a water conductivity device
- Measure weather basics such as temperature, humidity, and dew point
- Build your own Geiger counter to gauge background radiation
- Extend Arduino with an Ethernet shield—and put your data on the Internet
- Share your weather and radiation data online through Pachube
Synopsis
This book teaches anyone to build simple, usable devices to gather data about different conditions in the environment, by using Arduinos and basic DIY electronics. Each chapter briefly explains a particular environmental problem, and features step-by-step instructions to build the appropriate monitoring device.
About the Author
Emily Gertz is a correspondent for OnEarth Magazine. She has been covering DIY environmental monitoring since 2004, when she interviewed engineer-artist Natalie Jeremijenko for Worldchanging.com. Her latest, on citizen radiation monitoring in Japan, was published by OnEarth Magazine in April 2011. She has been hands-on with internet technologies since 1994 as a web producer, community host, and content strategist. Her articles have appeared in Grist, Dwell, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, and more.
Patrick Di Justo is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, where he writes the magazine's monthly What's Inside column, and the author of The Science of Battlestar Galactica (Wiley, October 2010). His work has appeared in Dwell, Scientific American, Popular Science, The New York Times, and more. He has worked as a robot programmer for the Federal Reserve, and knows C, C++, Java, and Processing. He bought his first Arduino in 2007.
Table of Contents
Dedication; Preface; How to Use This Book; Conventions Used in This Book; Using Code Examples; Safari® Books Online; How to Contact Us; Chapter 1: The Worlds Shortest Electronics Primer; 1.1 What Is Arduino?; 1.2 Electronic Circuits and Components; 1.3 Programming Arduino; 1.4 First Sketch: Make an LED Blink; Chapter 2: Project: Noise Monitor/LED Bar Output; 2.1 Measuring Noise: The Microphone; 2.2 Make the Gadget; Chapter 3: New Component: 4Char Display; 3.1 Test Project; Chapter 4: Detecting Electromagnetic Interference (and making bad music); 4.1 Detecting EMI Sources in the Environment; 4.2 Make the Gadget; 4.3 What Are We Measuring with This Gadget?; Chapter 5: Project: Water Conductivity/Numerical Output; 5.1 What Is Conductivity, and Why Do I Care?; 5.2 Make the Gadget; Chapter 6: New Component: Ethernet Shield; 6.1 Using the Ethernet Shield; 6.2 Testing the Ethernet Shield; 6.3 Testing the SD Card Slot; 6.4 Things to Try; Chapter 7: Project: Humidity, Temperature & Dew Point/4Char Display; 7.1 You Dont Have to Be a Weatherman to Measure the Weather; 7.2 Getting Usable Measurements; 7.3 First Electronic Sensor: The DHT-22; 7.4 Using Code Libraries; 7.5 Make the Gadget; Chapter 8: Real-Time, Geo-Tagged Data Sharing with Pachube; 8.1 Test Project: Connecting and Uploading Data to Pachube; 8.2 Things To Try; Chapter 9: Project: Radiation Counter/Sharing Data on the Internet; 9.1 Whats a Geiger Counter?; 9.2 Make the Gadget; 9.3 What Are We Measuring with This Gadget?; 9.4 Failure Mode Analysis; 9.5 Things to Try; Chapter 10: Casing the Gadget;