Raspberry Pi, Node Red, & the Internet of Things - Create With Code Final Project

I've decided to divide this project's material into a few separate blog posts. I wanted to create standalone blogs for my step-by-step tutorials: Procedure for Starting a Node-Red Server and Procedure for RPi Connecting to Ubidots since each post contains detailed screen-captures and instructions. One long post would have created a horribly long scrolling experience. I've also included a link to the Google Drive project folder which contains other components of this project such as resource links and the assessment rubric.

Intro Video for Project

Building a People/Animal Counter or a Node-Red Flow

Project Info:

Tools and Product

Node-Red is is an open-source, block-based or (aka “drag-and-drop”) programming tool developed by the IBM Emerging Technology Team for “wiring” devices and software to communicate with one another within the Internet of Things. Another open source tool introduced in this project is Ubidots, an web based API (Application Programming Interface) that specifies structure of data that will be exchanged between devices connected to the Cloud.

This all might sound a bit complex, but Node-Red doesn’t require the user to do any text-based coding, so it is a great tool for people to get started with learning about the IoT. Node-Red currently comes bundled with the most recent version of the Raspbian operating system, Jessie, for Raspberry Pi. Node-Red allows users to build "flows" which are graphical representations of devices communicating via the Cloud, collecting, transferring, analyzing, and sharing data.

For this project, students will be borrowing portions of code and concepts from a variety of provided online resources which are included in the Links for Online Resources doc. This unit of study will take approximately three weeks to complete and will culminate with students presenting their final projects to their classmates, teachers, parents, and possibly computer science mentors from the local community.

Goals and Purpose

This high school level project is designed as an intermediate to advanced unit that would be assigned to students who have already spent several weeks getting familiar with circuit building, sensors, and Raspberry Pi programming software used in conjunction the the Raspberry Pi GPIO (General Purpose Input Output). Students will be encouraged to have their final project focus on a real-life situation that relates to environmental science and/or the collection of data relating to human activity and the effects of that activity on the environment.

Summary

My primary goal for this project is to create an open-ended, flexible project that can be applied to many high school fields of study and hopefully inspire teachers to begin integrating computer science projects into their curriculum. With a few small adjustments, this project could be redesigned to align with math, art, or social studies state and tech standards. Raspberry Pi, Node-Red, and the Internet of Things all provide a massive menagerie of tools that can inspire creative thinking and exploration of new technologies which offer new learning opportunities to all genres of students.

Project Guidelines

Google Drive Project Folder - all docs