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Research Paper On Arduino and Its Application

This document describes the development of a low-cost technology-based laboratory using open-source hardware and software tools to improve science learning. An Arduino microcontroller board is used to interface with various sensors to measure parameters during experiments. Experiments like measuring the time period of a pendulum and light intensity have been automated. The Arduino board collects data from sensors and displays it on mobile devices or computers using applications developed in Eclipse IDE. This provides students with real-time experimentation and analysis capabilities to enhance their understanding of scientific concepts in a more engaging way compared to traditional manual tools.

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Kunal
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3K views

Research Paper On Arduino and Its Application

This document describes the development of a low-cost technology-based laboratory using open-source hardware and software tools to improve science learning. An Arduino microcontroller board is used to interface with various sensors to measure parameters during experiments. Experiments like measuring the time period of a pendulum and light intensity have been automated. The Arduino board collects data from sensors and displays it on mobile devices or computers using applications developed in Eclipse IDE. This provides students with real-time experimentation and analysis capabilities to enhance their understanding of scientific concepts in a more engaging way compared to traditional manual tools.

Uploaded by

Kunal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Technology based laboratory to improve science learning

Avinash Kumar Shudhanshu, Raj Kumar, Sadashiv Raj Bharadwaj, Gaurav Singh, Amit Garg*
*corresponding author
Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi, Govindpuri, Kalkaji,
New Delhi-110019, India,
E-mail: amit_andc@yahoo.co.in
AbstractTill date, manual routine tools and techniques are used
to perform various experimental procedures in most of the
science laboratories in our country. The manual tools are
cumbersome whereas the automated ones are costly. It does not
enthuse young researchers towards the science laboratories.
There is a need to develop applications which can be easily
integrated, tailored in school and undergraduate level
laboratories and are economical at the same time. Equipments
with advanced technologies are available but they are
uneconomical and have complicated working principle with a
black box approach. The present work describes development of
portable tools and applications which are user-friendly and can
be interfaced with different mobile platforms like android. This is
being implemented using open-source physical computing
platform based on a simple microcontroller board and a
development environment for writing software for the board. An
arduino microcontroller board with SDK is being used for
interfacing different sensors for measuring required parameters
during various experiments. These sensors include but not
limited to light, sound, temperature, salinity etc. Robust
application soft wares are being developed using eclipse IDE in
Java and other programming languages. These tools will inspire
young researchers towards science and facilitate development of
advance low cost equipments making life easier for Indian
society.

boost students to design new experiments and work in the


depth of concept.
Though we have automated a range of experiments, we
discuss two of them in this paper. They are:
Calculating time period of a simple pendulum
Measuring intensity of light
\
II.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The generic form of basic experimental setup for any of
the experiments listed above is shown in Fig.1

Experiments

Sensors

Keywords- Science laboratory, sensors, Android, Arduino, Eclipse,


Open-Source, Microcontroller.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last few years there has been a substantial increase
in use of sensors across the world in all domains which has
eased our life as well as research/education in various fields.
However, being expensive there use is only limited to
commercial and higher level laboratories. This paper reports
a low cost method of acquiring data from different sensors
and extending this system to perform different experiments at
various levels. Low cost, tailoring as per the need and easy
deployment make this system suitable for schools and
undergraduate laboratory.This provides a learning
environment using sensors and advanced tools for data
acquisition and analysis offers many opportunities to students
to perform experiments in science and technology in real time
to investigate physical phenomena. An automated science
laboratory will enhance interest as well as productivity of
students in research by reducing time of collecting and
analyzing data. New technology with increased accuracy will

Arduino
Microcontroller Board

Android Phone/PC/LCD

Fig.1 Generic experimental setup

As shown in Fig. 1, the experiment is set up in its


conventional form and the data from it is captured using
some type of sensor like voltage sensor, rotary sensor, light
sensor etc.. These sensors are interfaced through to the
microcontroller board like arduino and then to the PC,
Android Device, LCD or any other display device. The
various types of microcontroller board can be used; here

we have used Arduino Mega ADK as it also provides


interface to most common mobile platform i.e. Android.
Some of the features of the Arduino Mega ADK used in
these experiments are discussed below:
1.Arduino: It is a single-board microcontroller, intended
to make the application of interactive objects or
environments more accessible. The hardware consists of
an open-source hardware board designed around an 8bit Atmel AVR microcontroller, or a 32-bit Atmel ARM.
Pre-programmed into the on-board microcontroller chip is
a boot loader that allows uploading programs into the
microcontroller memory without needing a chip (device)
programmer. An Arduino Mega ADK Board is shown in
Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 An Arduino Mega ADK Microcontroller Board

The Arduino integrated development environment (IDE) is


a cross-platform application written in Java, and is derived
from the IDE for the Processing programming
language and the Wiring projects. It is designed to
introduce programming to artists and other newcomers
unfamiliar with software development. It includes a code
editor with features such as syntax highlighting, brace
matching, and automatic indentation, and is also capable
of compiling and uploading programs to the board with a
single click. A program or code written for Arduino is
called a "sketch. Arduino programs are written in C or C+
+. The Arduino IDE comes with a software library called
"Wiring" from the original Wiring project, which makes
many common input/output operations much easier. Users
only need define two functions to make a runnable cyclic
executive program:
Some key features of Arduino microcontroller board are
listed below:
i.
Microcontroller
ATmega2560
ii.
Operating Voltage
5V
iii.
Input Voltage
7-12V
(recommended)
iv.
Input Voltage
6-20V
(limits)
54 (of which 15
v.
Digital I/O Pins
provide PWM
output)

vi.
vii.
viii.

Analog Input Pins


DC Current per I/O
Pin
DC Current for 3.3V
Pin

ix.

Flash Memory

x.
xi.
xii.

SRAM
EEPROM
Clock Speed

16
40 mA
50 mA
256 KB of
which 8 KB
used by
bootloader
8 KB
4 KB
16 MHz

List of some sensors interfaced with Arduino:


i.
Light sensor
ii.
Sound level meter
iii.
Drop counter
iv.
Motion Sensor
v.
O2 gas sensor
vi.
pH sensor
vii.
CO2 gas sensor and many others
2. Eclipse: In computer programming, it is an integrated
development environment (IDE). It
contains a
base workspace and an extensible plug-insystem for
customizing the environment. Written mostly in Java,
Eclipse can be used to develop applications. By means of
various plug-ins, Eclipse may also be used to develop
applications in other programming languages: Ada, C, C+
+, COBOL, Fortran, Haskell,JavaScript, Lasso, Perl, PHP,
Python, R, Ruby (including Ruby
on
Rails framework), Scala, Clojure, Groovy, Scheme,
and Erlang. It can also be used to develop packages for
the software Mathematica. Development environments
include the Eclipse Java development tools (JDT) for Java
and Scala, Eclipse CDT for C/C++ and Eclipse PDT for
PHP, among others.Eclipse uses plug-ins to provide all the
functionality within and on top of the runtime system. Its
runtime system is based on Equinox, an implementation
of the OSGi core framework specification. Fig.3 shows a
screen shot of Eclipse IDE
The Eclipse IDE for Java Developers contains what you
need to build Java applications. Considered by many to be
the best Java development tool available, the Eclipse IDE
for Java Developers provides superior Java editing with
validation, incremental compilation and cross-referencing.
Eclipse supports a rich selection of extensions, adding
support
for Python via pydev, Android development
via Googles ADT, JavaFX support via e(fx)clipse, and
many others at the Eclipse Marketplace.

Fig. 3 screenshot of an Eclipse IDE

ii.Measuring intensity of light


However, there are a lot of measuring instruments which
measures intensity of light conveniently. But they have a
very complicated operational mechanism which is not
easy to understand and makes it costly as well. We used a
simple light sensor using Si photodetector to sense
intensity of light. We mounted the light sensor such that it
is exposed toward the source of light whose intensity is to
be measured. Its output is then connected to analog input
port of the arduino board. The arduino board has been
calibrated as per the specifications of the light sensor to
display intensity of light in lux (luminous intensity or
luminous flux). This is shown in Fig.5
III. RESULT AND DESCUSSION
We discuss the details of the two experiments which have
been listed in section I.
i.

Light source

light sensor

Arduino

Display

Fig. 5 Schematic of measuring intensity of light

Bob Pendulum

III.
CONCLUSION
The present development shows how an open source
microcontroller board can be deployed for acquiring data
from sensors and further displaying these data on LCDs
and other most common mobile platform i.e. Android. It
helped undergraduate students integrate technology into a
science laboratory, use same set of hardware components
in different experiments, tailor the set up as per their
learning need. At the same time, it helped in examining
closely the underlying concept of experiment, minimising
the time of experiment and reducing the error. Students
have been able to complete error free experiment and go
beyond the realm of the syllabus to develop innovative
ideas.

Laser Diode

IV.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors duly acknowledge University of Delhi for
providing financial assistance under Innovative Projects
from Colleges scheme for the project Development of
Low cost computer controlled science laboratory using
sensors and open source hardware and software tools
against sanction no. ANDC-202.

Calculating time period of a simple pendulum: For a


complete understanding of calculation of time period
through the electronic hardware in the laboratory, the
experimental setup is as shown in figure 4. Laser light is
made incident on the pendulum in the plane perpendicular
to the oscillation of pendulum and a light sensor is
mounted behind it to sense the intensity of light. Each
time the bob of the pendulum oscillates it obstructs the
laser beam and ano light condition is sensed by the light
sensor. The microcontroller has been programmed to
calculate the time difference and display the time period
on LCD.

light sensor

Arduin

i.

Displ
Fig. 4.Schematic showing an automated experiment to calculate time
period of simple pendulum

ii.
iii.

iv.

V.
REFRENCES
https://www.eclipse.org/
http://www.arduino.cc/
http://www.android.com/
http://www.vernier.com/location/?redirect=
%2Fproducts%2Fsensors%2F

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