Teaching With Open-Source Electronics

These instructions were written to help teachers and students get the necessary software installed on their computers in preparation for our Introduction to Environmental Sensing workshop.   If you want to try this at home, you’ll need to follow one of the Adafruit tutorials listed below.

1. Download and install the Arduino IDE software. (For detailed instructions on software installation, visit Getting Started With Arduino).
2. Download the additional function libraries.
3. Download the source code examples.
4. Unzip the source code example file and put all of the directories in the following location: Windows: My Documents/Arduino/ MacOS X: Documents/Arduino/
5. Manually create a folder in the same Arduino directory above, this one should be called “libraries” (all lowercase letters, no quotes).
6. Unzip the libraries zip file and put all of the directories into the newly created “libraries” folder.

Adafruit Tutorials

For detailed tutorials about some of the sensors used with Stroud Water Research Center’s Sensor Shield, follow these links:

• Force Sensitive Resistor
• Temperature Sensor TMP36
• Temperature/Humidity Sensor DHT22
• Luminosity Sensor TSL2561
• Barometric Pressure Sensor BMP085

All of these sensors can be purchased from Adafruit Industries.