Mr Chapman’s Year 9 class have been building soil sensors as part of a collaboration with local telemetry company Porosity. The students began by using microbits and scratch to code a rudimentary soil probe. They programmed the sensor to read the voltage between two nails placed into the soil. Following this, they built gypsum sensors and tested (with the kind help of Mr Zola) how increasing the volume of water in dry sand affected the readings taken.
The students then headed out to Windermere, the new school farm, to set up a weather station with the help of current parent Mr Frazer Slack-Smith from Porosity. This station feeds back information to the school via Porosity’s website. The students presented their project to visitors at The Regional Technology Expo the following day.
Next term the students will first be learning how to use arduinos to build more advanced sensors before programming their own data logger to collect readings which can be remote accessed to gain real-time weather data. They will also design a website to show this data, linking it into the FROG dashboard so that it can be accessed by the school and the farm manager.
The Regional Engagement Enterprise 