Enhance your smartphone with a Bluetooth Arduino nano board

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-cost Bluetooth-enabled Arduino nano device that enhances physics experiments with smartphones, offering a safe, versatile, and accessible tool for educational purposes.

Contribution

It presents a novel, affordable microcontroller-based sensor platform that transmits data via Bluetooth, addressing device safety and sensor heterogeneity issues in physics education.

Findings

Device is low-cost and easy to use.

Enables a wide range of physics experiments.

Reduces risks associated with smartphone sensor use.

Abstract

Using smartphones in experimental physics teachings offers many advantages in term of engagement, pedagogy and flexibility. But it presents the drawbacks of possibly endangering the device and also facing the heterogeneity of available sensors on different smartphones. We present a low-cost alternative that preserves the advantages of smartphones: using a microcontroller equipped with a large variety of sensors that transmits data to a smartphone using Bluetooth Low-Energy protocol. This device can be lent to students with little risks and used to perform a wide range of experiments. It opens the way to new types of physics teachings.