IoT with a Soft Touch: A Modular Remote Sensing Platform for STE(A)M Applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modular, easy-to-assemble IoT sensing platform designed to enhance STE(A)M education and attract diverse students by simplifying sensor deployment and focusing on environmental and health applications.

Contribution

It presents a low-power, modular IoT platform with an intuitive configurator, enabling students to create customized wireless sensors for educational and practical purposes.

Findings

Platform facilitates student engagement in STE(A)M activities.

Wireless data transmission via LoRaWAN supports real-time monitoring.

Modular design simplifies sensor customization and deployment.

Abstract

Besides wide attraction in the industry, IoT is being used to advance STEM and STEAM education across a range of education levels. This work presents a remote sensing platform, named IoT with a Soft Touch, developed to achieve two goals. First, it aims to lower the technicality, stimulating the students to do STE(A)M. Second, the technology is to be used in `softer' applications (e.g., environmental and health care), thereby aiming to attract a more diverse set of student profiles. Students can easily build a wireless sensing device, with a specific application in mind. The modular design of the platform and an intuitive graphical configurator tool allows them to tailor the device's functionality to their needs. The sensor's data is transmitted wirelessly with LoRaWAN. The data can be viewed and analyzed on a dashboard, or the raw data can be extracted for further processing, e.g., as part of the school's STE(A)M curriculum. This work elaborates on the low-power and modular design challenges, and how the platform is used in education.