Tutorial Description

Abstract

While most of the tutorials of the 2018 AFNOG conference deal with Internet related problems this particular tutorial on IoT (Internet of Things) focuses on sensor readout. IoT devices consist of a microcontroller with Internet access that interfaces to sensors reading real world parameters. These can be temperature, air pressure, rain fall, light intensity, color, distance, speed ...

During the tutorial we will build a virtual world from simple 3D objects like spheres, boxes, cylinders etc. This virtual world produces an image of sensors we use in the real world. When, in the real world, we put a colored paper in front of a color and a distance sensor, then a sheet with the same color and the correct distance from the distance sensor will appear in the virtual world.

The components of the demonstration

The demonstration can be sub-divided into two distinct parts

• the real world program, getting data from a distance and a color sensor
• the virtual world getting the parameters and from the real world and displaying a colored sheet of paper, whose color corresponds to the real world one and whose distance to the virtual sensor corresponds to the distance of a real paper sheet in front of a real distance sensor

The tutorial will not only demonstrate the creation of the virtual world and the sensor readout using Python programming but will give the participants the possibility to try to develop these programs by themselves.

We will have 10 complete hardware sets and all that is needed from the participant is a laptop with an ssh client.

Here is a short overview of intermediate steps to the final project:

• Introduction to Python programming
  • some simple programming exercises
• Accessing external hardware
  • making the RDB LED light up
• The color sensor
  • description of the TCS3200 chip and its programming
  • the participant will write a program to display the r,g,b components read from a colored paper sheet
  • Combination of LED and color sensor: Displaying on the LED the color read from the color sensor
• The distance sensor
  • Understand how the HC-SR04 ultra-sonic distance sensor works
  • Write a program that reads the sensor and prints the distance of a paper sheet to the sensor in cm (or inches if you prefer)
• Creating of the virtual world
  • Create a cylinder, box, shere in 3D using VPython. Change sizes, colors, positions
• Combining the virtual world with the real world
  • Display the distance of a paper sheet in the virtual world, updating it when the distance changes
  • Modify the color of the sheet in the virtual world when the paper changes in the real world

Hands-on experience

Hands-on experiments make up a major part of the tutorial. There will be formal tutorial lectures explaining the principles but the participant will have the possibility to immediately exercise the newly learned material. Ten experimental stations with Raspberry Pi 3 micro-computers and their associated sensors will be available for the practical sessions. All the participant needs is his own laptop with an ssh client understanding the X protocol.

-- Uli Raich - 2018-02-08

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