2. Week 02¶
This week I was thinking about using IOT for my lessons content.
Problem: When working with clay, air humidity is critical. If humidity is too low, clay dries too fast, becomes brittle, and cracks. If humidity is too high, clay becomes overly soft and messy. Especially when clay lessons are interrupted or split between sessions, you need to monitor humidity carefully to protect the clay work.
Solution: Install a humidity sensor and a real-time monitor to track room humidity during clay sessions!
Devices and Platforms: Device: ESP32 board (or Arduino with Wi-Fi) Sensor: DHT22 (better than DHT11 for more precise humidity measurement) Platform: Blynk IoT App (to see humidity remotely)
OR an OLED display attached directly to the ESP32 for local display.
About the task¶
Task: Assignment. IoT activity in your classroom The task was: Connect your microcontroller board with another device: it can be another microcontroller, a cloud application, or a mobile phone. They should be able to communicate data generated or sensed using the board to the other end. Alternatively, use your board to receive instructions from the other device.
Project Attempt: Connecting My Microcontroller to a Cloud Application For this task, I attempted to connect my ESP32 microcontroller to the Blynk cloud application to send humidity data from a DHT11 sensor. My goal was for the microcontroller to read the sensor value, send it to the Blynk mobile app in real-time, and later use the app to send simple control signals back to the board (e.g., turn on an LED).
I started by wiring the DHT11 sensor to the ESP32, and I wrote the code using the Blynk library and Blynk.virtualWrite() to send data to Virtual Pin V1. I also configured a gauge widget in the Blynk app to display the humidity.
However, I was not able to complete the connection successfully. Even though the code compiled and uploaded correctly, I encountered the following issues: The board sometimes failed to connect to WiFi. Even when connected, the app showed no incoming data. The Blynk console showed no activity, suggesting either a token mismatch or connectivity failure.
Although I didn’t achieve the communication goal, the attempt helped me recognize common pitfalls in IoT projects. I plan to retry this task.
Reflection questions¶
What are some opportunities in your context to work with your local community? Who could you collaborate with? What would be needed to succeed? We are doing a project about colors, students ame survey how community members define the color of city , wich color they think they will ad to the city, and the project could be about making colorfull street arts in places where it could be usefull for city.
What are the next steps in developing or improving a makerspace in your school? How do you envision it? I think I will start thinking about organaizing the space for different age activities, have conversations with other teachers, also to understand how they want to use the space for their project also.
What is the potential of physical computing and IoT in your teaching? How do you plan to integrate these techniques in your context? approaching IoT not just as technology, but as a tool to enrich sensory experiences, human interaction, and environmental awareness. Here’s how you can begin thinking about integrating IoT principles into artistic teaching, even with simple materials or projects: IoT Principle: Users affect the system through touch, motion, or presence. Artistic Teaching Idea: IoT Principle: Devices sense light, temperature, humidity, motion, etc. Artistic Teaching Idea: Use a light sensor (photoresistor) to create a painting or digital piece that changes color or shape depending on ambient light. Ask students to “draw with light”—have LEDs react to environmental data like hand movements or sounds using simple microcontrollers. The idea that the world is full of invisible data, and artists can visualize or sonify it.
Code Example¶
// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board void setup() { // initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output. pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT); }
// the loop function runs over and over again forever void loop() { digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level) delay(1000); // wait for a second digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW delay(1000); // wait for a second } ```
Gallery¶
This code reads an analog signal from pin A3 and shows the value in the Serial Monitor so we can see what the sensor is detecting.
We are reading moisture values from a capacitive sensor while touching the clay in different spots to see how the readings change, using pin A3 on the XIAO ESP32S3 board and showing the results in the Serial Monitor.
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We are reading moisture values from a capacitive sensor while touching the clay in different spots to see how the readings change, using pin A3 on the XIAO ESP32S3 board and showing the results in the Serial Monitor.
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I was trying to connect the XIAO ESP32S3 board to Wi-Fi using the Blynk platform,but the Serial Monitor shows repeated failure messages indicating it can’t establish a connection