Arduino Projects to Save the World

Arduino Projects to Save the Worldshows you that it takes little more than a few tools, a few wires and sensors, an Arduino board, and a bit of gumption to build devices that lower our energy bills, help you grow our own food, monitor pollution in the air and in the ground, even warn you about earth tremors-and, incidentally, about unwanted intruders. To make environmentally sound decisions for our homes, we need data which are collected from sensors.Emery Premeauxintroduces the types of sensors needed to collect environmental data, from temperature and gas sensors to soil moisture and motion sensors. You might ask questions regarding energy sources, from building your own power strip to running your Arduino board on solar panels, which Premeaux answers before you can actually proceed to build systems that help, for example, to lower your energy bills. If you have programming skills they are welcome too, and Emery shows you how they can be put to good use by publishing our data on the net and to use other people's data to make environmentally sound decisions. The core of the book deals with theArduino Projects to Save the World. Premeaux starts off with an air pollution and dust monitor sophisticated enough to allow for most standard urban pollution scenarios. He then shows you how to put together our own weather station, including a barometric pressure sensor to warn you from more extreme weather. This is relevant in many parts of the world where public weather data provision is under cost pressure and localized extreme weather is often being reported too late. In colder regions and during winter, heat loss through windows and badly insulated walls is a problem that's rarely addressed by commercial device vendors. Premeaux shows you how to account for heat loss using a heat loss temperature sensor array. And how about building your own seismic monitor? Many of the world's largest cities are located in earthquake-prone zones. Of course, you should be able to check the quality of the water you are consuming, hence Emery shows you how to check water contamination. An expandable home emergency warning system that warns you about pollution in the air or fire hazards pulls together some of the threads in this book. You will also learn how to plan and build a sophisticated energy consumption monitor. Finally, there is the issue of using your balcony and window real estate to grow food-a field known as window farming. Arduino-based soil moisture, humidity and temperature sensors are helpful for those and for long-term data collection on your own private balcony farm. What you'll learn Help the environment by using Arduino Install and use environmental sensors Use low-energy or solar energy sources for your Arduino board to avoid loading conventional energy grids Build an Arduino-based weather station and a seismic monitor to protect your home Measure energy flows inside your home using temperature sensor arrays and humidity sensors Pull together your environmental data in an energy consumption monitor Use an Arduino board to monitor your window farm Who this book is for Programmers excited by Arduino Arduino users looking for green projects Embedded systems engineers interested in Arduino