Int. J. of Recent Trends in Engineering & Technology, Vol. 11, June 2014
Innovation in Basic Science Laboratory through
Sensors and Open Source Technology
A. Avinash Kumar Shudhanshu1, B. Amit Garg2, C. Raj Kumar2, D.Sadashiv Raj Bharadwaj2,
and E. Gaurav Singh2
1
Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi, Govindpuri, Kalkaji,
New Delhi-110019, India.
Email: avinashsudhanshu@gmail.com
2
Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi, Govindpuri, Kalkaji,
New Delhi-110019, India.
Email: amit_andc@yahoo.com, raj.kinng@gmail.com, kunalb1995@gmail.com, iemailgauravsingh@gmail.com
Abstract—There is a lack of innovation at secondary and the tertiary education level while performing experiments in the science laboratories. This is because manual routine tools and techniques are employed to perform
various experiments in most of the science laboratories. The manual tools are cumbersome whereas the commercially available automated ones are costly. It does not enthusiast young researchers towards innovative ideas.
There is a need to develop technology based methods of experiments which can be easily integrated, tailored in
school and undergraduate level laboratories and are economical at the same time. Available technology for performing these experiments is expensive making the deployment difficult at school level. The present work describes development of portable tools and applications which can be interfaced with different mobile platforms
like android/PC/LCD and are user friendly also. Arduino microcontroller board with SDK is being used for interfacing different sensors for measuring required parameters during various experiments. The sensors reported in
the present work are light, pH and drop counter. Open source application softwares are being developed using
eclipse IDE in Java and other programming languages. These open source tools will inspire young researchers
towards science and facilitate development of advance low cost equipment making life easier and creating an innovative environment.
Keywords- Science laboratory, sensors, Android, Arduino, automation, Open-Source, Microcontroller.
I. INTRODUCTION
In a science survey conducted by the NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research), India, 22
per cent of the class 6-8 students said they would like to study pure science in the future. Yet, at the level of
class 11 and 12, only 13.4 per cent of the surveyed students wanted to study pure sciences at the graduate/postgraduate level, Fig. 1. This percentage is lower than the figure for other disciplines – engineering,
medicine, arts, and commerce [1].
313
Figure 1.Preferred subject for higher education by different level of students.
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. At the same time, it 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/learning by reducing time of collecting and analysing
data. New technology with increased accuracy will boost students to design new experiments and work in
depth of a concept.
II.EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The generic form of basic experimental setup for any of the experiments listed above is shown in Fig. 2
314
Experiments
Aquiring Data from Experiments.
Sensors
Conversion of Physical Data into Electrical signals.
Microcontroller
Using Programmable Microcontroller for manupulation and Logging of Data via data
cable or blootooth/ethernet sheild.
Application
Developing Ready to Use Application to be used on display devices.
Display Devices
Using familier devices like Mobile Phone, Computers, and Liquide Crystal Displays
for viewing results.
Figure 2. 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 light sensor, pH sensor or the drop counter. These sensors are interfaced to a microcontroller board like Arduino. Some type of ready to use application is build that helps in interfacing sensors
with display devices and further logging and calculation result. Display devices like Android phone, personal
computers, Liquid Crystal Displays are being used. Though various types of microcontroller boards can be
used; here we have used „Arduino Mega ADK‟, Fig. 3 [2].
Figure 3. An Arduino Mega ADK Microcontroller board.
315
A. Some key features of ArduinoMega ADK microcontroller board are listed below which makes it fit for our
purpose:
i.
ii.
iii.
Arduino Mega ADK provides interface with most common mobile platform i.e. Android.
It has a wide range of connectivity options like, USB cable, Ethernet shield, Bluetooth shield etc.
It also provides many options to power the microcontroller in many ways making it robust and versatile. Like it can be powered using USB port or via External DC Power source.
iv.
It uses ATmega2560 microcontroller which has 256KBof Flash memory, which is easier to handle
with bigger and extended programs, especially for beginners.
v. It has clock speed of 16h MHZ which is fast enough for accuracy at this level.
vi. It provides current up to 50 mA which is enough to drive sensors and wireless shields.
vii. It is very easy to reprogram it, as it provided with IDE (integrated development Environment),
which does not requires expertise in programming.
viii. It is open source hardware which does not require copyright for experimental purpose.
B. Development of ready to use application:
We are using Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to build application for android and other
platform. Some of the Points regarding Eclipse IDE are listed below [3]:
i.
A section of extension is supported by Eclipse which adds support via Android and PyDev development for Python.
ii.
For Java Developers, superior Java editing with cross-referencing, validation and incremental compilation is provided by eclipse IDE.
iii. It is mostly written in JAVA. For customization it contains an extensible plugin system and base
workshop
iv.
It also supports developing applications in other programming languages like FORTRAN, C, and
C++ etc.
v. It is open source software and does not require copyright for experimental purposes.
III. RELATED WORKS
Though we have automated a range of experiments, we report four of them in this paper. They are:
A. Measuring intensity of light
B. Calculating time period of a simple pendulum
C. Measuring pH of a solution
D. Performing Acid Base titration
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
We discuss the details of the experiments which have been listed in previous section.
A. 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 photo detector to sense intensity of light. Its output is 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.4.
316
Light source
light sensor
Arduino
Display
Figure 4.Schematic of measuring intensity of light.
B. 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 Fig.5. 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 a „no 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.
Bob Pendulum
Laser Diode
light sensor
Arduino
board
Display
Figure 5.Schematic showing an automated experiment to calculate time period of simple pendulum
C. Measuring pH of a solution
The block diagram in Fig.6 shows the automated experimental setup to measure the pH of a solution using
sensors and other hardware.
We used a Vernier pH sensor which gives us voltage output ranging from 0 to 5V according to the pH of the
solution i.e. from 0 to 14. The sensor was calibrated in terms of voltage using standard pH solutions. Arduino
was accordingly programmed based on the calibration results. The pH value was displayed on LCD. Other
display device can also be used to show the value of pH.
317
Figure 6.Schematic showing an automated experiment to determine pH of a given solution
D. Performing Acid Base titration
A titration is a process used to determine the volume of a solution that is needed to react with given amount
of another substance. In this experiment, we used an LCD to monitor pH as we titrate with the help of pH
sensor. The region of most rapid pH change then can be used to determine the equivalence point. The volume
of base (NaOH) titrant used at the equivalence point can be used to determine the molarity of the acid (HCl
solution).We used a Vernier Drop Counter to conduct the titration. NaOH titrant is delivered drop by drop
from the reagent reservoir through the Drop Counter slot. After the drop reacts with the reagent in the beaker,
the volume of the drop is calculated and a pH-volume data pair is stored. Fig. 7 shows the apparatus and the
assembly used in experiment. Further, equivalence point can be determined using graph.
Figure 7.Schematic showing an automated experiment to Perform Acid Base titration.
V. 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 or PC. 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.
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.
REFERENCES
[1]National Knowledge Commission, Government of India, Report to Nation 2006 – 200,More Talented Students in
Maths and Science,www.knowledgecommission.gov.in, pp. 96–99, March 2009.
[2] Michael McRoberts “Beginning Arduino”, Apress, 2010, pp.1-12, pp.359-414.
[3] “Eclipse Download”, Eclipse. Web.https://www.eclipse.org/. March 2014.
[4] “Training Videos”, Vernier. Web.http://www.vernier.com/training/. March 2014
318