Celebrate Earth Day with these Arduino projects
In celebration of Earth Day, we thought it would be fun to highlight a handful of open-source projects that may inspire you to help make a positive impact on our world. From air quality and water pollution monitoring to wildlife conservation and deforestation prevention, here are just some of the ways our community members are leveraging Arduino to come up with innovative solutions.
GSM & SMS-Enabled, AI-Driven Water Pollution Monitor
Kutluhan Aktar has developed a budget-friendly, MKR GSM 1400-equipped device to collect water quality data from various resources and forecast pollution levels based on oxidation-reduction potential, pH, total dissolved solids, and turbidity measurements.
Mahout – Save the Elephants
In an effort to secure a future for vulnerable African elephants, Mithun Das prototyped a Nano 33 BLE Sense-powered smart collar that employs GPS, LoRaWAN, and embedded machine learning.
RepRapable Recyclebot
The team of Joshua Pearce, Adam Pringle, Joseph McCaslin, and Aubrey Woern devised an open-source, Arduino Mega-controlled extruder that converts recycled plastic into commercial-grade 3D printing filament.
Training Wild Birds to Trade Litter for Food
Researcher Hans Forsberg has managed to train magpies to exchange litter for food through the use of a high-tech dispenser, which features an Arduino-powered sensor setup to detect bottle caps.
Arduino Air Quality Monitor
After he found himself checking PurpleAir’s map multiple times a day for local air quality data, Dominic Pajak realized that a MKR WiFi 1010 could simply read the value itself and display the color on a MKR RGB Shield — so you would always know when it’s safe to go outside.
Senso
Built around a MKR FOX 1200, Senso is a low-powered system by Andrei Florian that utilizes audio analysis to identify the sound of logging machinery and immediately alert authorities.
TinyML Aerial Forest Fire Detection
Forest fires are a serious and deadly problem all around the world, especially in California — the home state of Nathaniel Felleke, Toren Andersen and Erk Sampat. This led the makers to create a long-range autonomous aerial vehicle out of an RC plane that’s capable of recognizing and reporting wildfires using a Nano 33 BLE with an onboard camera, tinyML, and a satellite modem.
Obviously, this is only a small sampling of the many projects conceived by the community. Working on a problem-solving build of your own? Share it with us! And be sure to browse other environmental-themed ideas here.