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Electronic design, e-design, refers to a new form of composition that has emerged in the late twentieth century. This is the art and science of planning, designing and creating with electronic devices, gears and larger machines. Some use the phrase electronic design to refer to just hardware. That is, this means that your programming designs are embedded in a certain kind of "hardware" made of power-sources like batteries or solar panels, and include wires, sensors, and mechanical parts. This essay uses the phrase to also refer to software. That, this can mean that your designs are embedded in "software" and are created not with physical connectors and solder but with programming language commands. This "under the radar" development has an increasingly huge impact on daily life and cutting edge science.

The skills to compose in this fashion have produced an explosion of applications for art, math and science. They have spawned hit TV shows and international competition (see the robot bibliography for more details). Most recently they have spurred the development of Internet-0 (Internet zero or I0), the "dumb network" for devices that do not need speed, an effort counter  to long standing efforts to create smarter faster networks.  As more and more elements of remote control and programming are integrated, the realm of robotics emerges. Our economy, culture and even our security are increasingly dependent on those individuals who have learned enough to invent and compose in this electronic design area of knowledge.

The need for these skills is in turn reflected in teacher technology competencies. In the North Carolina teacher technology competency, 11.0. Subject-Specific Knowledge, teachers must demonstrate that they can:

• 11.3 Use technology-based tools that are specific to the discipline.
• 11.4 Use technology to facilitate teaching strategies specific to the discipline.
When teaching art, math and science at a wide variety of grade levels the technological tools discussed below are today an important part of these areas of study and application. Though this page focuses on sensors, they work together with topics in computer programming, and robotics.

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Sensors

The subjects of social studies, science and math emphasize the importance of measured observation and the analysis of that data in a way that seeks patterns in the numbers, that seeks cause-effect relationships between different approaches to problems. Sensors are devices which record a wide array of subject specific data. There is an immense array of sensors (also called probes) that are hooked to computers providing analysis tools and charting or graphing to magnify such thinking. They might report the number of people who pass through a turnstile at the movies or use a bar code reader at the grocery store to indicate that the last can of tuna has been purchased and it is time to restock the shelve. When sensors are dropped in streams, they might report the level of water, its speed, temperature, water clarity, or the presence and percentage of disease causing bacteria such as coliform. Not only can these sensors report data from the desktops in your classroom and fields around your school, but via the Internet, the live data reaching your classroom can come from the edge of the solar system and  universe. The Hubble Space telescope is but an optical sensor controlled by earth-based computers. Several stunning remote-control developments with global impact can be found on the Internet and used in the classroom. Not only do scientists find this form of number collecting valuable; artists too find special roles for this data. Can you see their art, science, math and social studies implications? Read on!
 

Manual Management of Electronic Device Data

There are numerous examples of sensor technology at work that do not connect with calculators or handheld computers, but use the data in other ways:
 
• Watches.
• Casio Watches including: microwave sensors for GPS location data ; infrared sensors for computer data communication.  For the history of such developments in recent years see the Casio Watch Manual Archive.
Gardening and outdoor industries.
Gemplers catalogs provide a number of sensor devices that are useful for growing plants and assisting other outdoor industries. [See http://www.gemplers.com Phone: 800.382.8473]
• Digital Sensors - Search for "Electronic Tongue"
• Multisensor Array (Electronic Tongue) for Monitoring Water Quality (NASA)
• Chemical and biological agent sensors (U. of Texas, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry)
• ABC National News: World News Tonight, Friday, March 5, 1999 (U. of Texas)
• Contacts
• Coweeta Hydrologic Lab , Otto, NC (828) 524-2128
• Dr. Jerry Miller, Endowed Chair, Environmental Studies, WCU
• DENR, Asheville Office, North Carolina

Dan Perlmutter, WCU

Remote and Networked Sensors

In many cases as with the above examples, data is collected by devices hooked to a calculator or portable computer and used by a person in the field. Then the sensor and its supporting technology is brought back to the lab and this data is hand carried to other computers and inserted for further analysis. Increasingly however, the sensor stays in the field. Using wires or wireless technology the remote sensor device somewhere on earth or within the solar system is controlled and observed from a professional's office or by you and your students sitting in your classroom. The discussion of sensors that follow cover many sensors that are connected to local  networks and often the Internet.

Instead of manually bringing the data to the computer, another approach is to use wireless technologies to automatically send data to a recording computer. Davis Company offers such systems with a variety of weather type stations with up to 15 different parameters being measured. Three system of transmission are being used. Spread spectrum radio modems can send up to 7 miles without a requirement for an FCC license. UHF radio modems can send up to 25 miles but require FCC license. Cell phone modems would cover infinite distances as long as they are within range of cell phone towers. If standard electrical power cannot be used, solar-charged battery systems are available. One system that Davis provides is a 6.5 amp-hour battery and solar panel that once charged with 1 hour of bright light can run the station for 16 hours in total darkness. A fully charged battery will run the system for about 8 days.

A variety of related but non-computer integrated systems are available. Sensaphone Systems provide frost alarms that phone several numbers until contact is made. Other sensors include temperature, humidity, water detection, motion, magnetic reed switch for alarms and low temperature audible alarms. Additional sensors support temperature controllers hat turn fans and heaters on and off. Lightning detectors systems report distance away and frequency of strikes. Many PH meters are also available.

Putting ever larger collections of sensors together creates the possibility of new levels of system integration. Does this table below of Internet integrated sensors extend the Gaia Hypothesis (one ; two ; three )? Interesting issues in both art, social studies and science emerge if you begin to think of the Internet as a form of global and cultural nervous system with superorganism-like capacities:

The Network has:	Parts of the network body.	Where to Buy?
Ears	I need some sites that use a microphone connected to our computer to respond to our voice. Can you help? Outside of specific web sites, Netscape 4.0 in general has a Conference feature that allows you to make Internet telephone calls and share a whiteboard for drawing and markup using its Conference feature, if you have a microphone.  Such electronic sensors are common but I need some web sites that can demonstrate the live detection or measurement of sounds. Please do a web search. Can you find anything new? [Use the right search technique to hunt for the phrase "electronic ears" and as of November 17, 1998 Alta Vista found 79 pages that used this phrase. Are there other search term or phrase? Try ultrasonic sensors.]   Explore K-8 grade math curriculum with Number Theory and music Hawaii-2 Observatory (H2O) located over 3 miles deep (16,400 feet) in the Pacific Ocean currently with seismometer and hydrophone (history of project). Fractal Sound Design (many great links to fractal art as well) Other sites interested in computer generated sound and music
Movement	Watch and Control a Model Train. Wave to the cats. (now defunct) The Telegarden - view and interact with a remote garden filled with living plants. Users can plant, water, and monitor the progress of seedlings via the tender movements of an industrial robot arm. TeleRobot site in Australlia, live video of robot ShadowServer. Activate lighting in an art installation. 50 Internet telerobotic projects Robots that you can control from the web.
Skin and Internal Systems	Sometimes the sensors help the web to act like skin hair and nerves, reporting on pressure, location, temperature, movement, speed and more. Weather Bug's cross-curriculum integrated weather sensors station. http://www.weatherbugachieve.com/product/hardware/ Sympathetic Haptics: Technology To Transmit Sensation Of Touch Over Internet, July 4, 2003 "Smart bricks": Smart bricks could monitor buildings, save lives "our sensor material can determine roughness, hardness, temperature and conductivity" (Winter, 2003) ; "Smart bricks" google search    "Smart skin"  SMU Researchers Receive Grant to develop "Smart Skin" (August 9, 2001) ; "Smart skin" google search    Tactile Sensor Construction The Buzbee Bat House Temperature Plot Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) Array-nearly 70 moored buoys spanning the equatorial Pacific from Indonesia to the Galapagos Islands. Web pages report air temperature, relative humidity, surface winds, sea surface temperatures and subsurface temperatures down to a depth of 500 meters. Satellite telemetry (animal surveilance) - article on tracking animals and their status via wireless sensor monitors (http://www.salon.com/ tech/feature/ 2001/08/27/animal_surveillance/) Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group Argos System Telemetry Maps for Wintering Adult Bald Eagles Other Bird and Mammal tracking at Argos Manatees Elephants Porcupines Securatrak car monitoring Mori displays live streaming seismographic data.  Put that silicon where the sun don't shine, analysis article Many of you know that the Tuckasegee River flows around our campus. You can check the Tucks' river depth sensors at Bryson City, NC any time of day by using the web. You can also check daily water level readings from rivers all across the United States.
Eyes	Many web sites track a wide array of devices hooked to the Internet. Almost any electrical or electronic device can be remotely accessed and/or controlled, from the Soda machines in your building to robots on and around Mars that provide images that can be seen with just a couple minutes of delay from their transmission from Mars. Nowhere left to hide,  analysis article Yahoo's List of Web Cameras Around the World in 80 Clicks. Public Access Telescope (30 inch mirror, Case Western, Cleveland, Ohio) EarthCam (huge catalog of web cams with something for almost every subject area) WCU web cams: Industrial Arts ; Hunter Library Computer Lab ; Bell Tower (Does anyone know of more?) The Hubble Space Telescope. (to the edges of the known universe) The Jason Projects. (to the edges of planet Earth) TundraCam, controllable cameras   WeatherCams in U.S. and in countries around the world. [Please do a web search. Can you find anything new? [Use the right search technique to hunt for the phrase "electronic eyes" and as of November 17, 1998 Alta Vista found 476 pages that used this phrase. Is there a better search term or phrase?]	Timed Video grabber software - free  Webcam32 software - $25  Summersoft Webcam software- $30.00  ISpy webcam software $49.00  Web Cam II hardware- $85.00 ; SiteCam software- $99 to educators  Zoom Videocam - $?150  QuickCam hardware $100-200  SiteZap hardware, $2000.00  Other hardware. How to: How Stuff Works: Webcams - How to set up a webcam and add images from it to a website. How To Set Up Your Own Webcam - basic tutorial on how to set up your own live webcam.
Voice	Speech. Talk to user.- Digitizes your typing and have it read back to you (now defunct). Anonymous Muttering. German site. Speech. Talk to them. Your typing is read out loud in the office from the receiving computer. List of sites for Speech Synthesis, Voice Recognition, and 3-D Sound Singing. Network traffic from a lab in Japan converted to sound forms. Show your class the effect of different fan speeds on wind chimes. Then ask them to imagine the flow of electrons in a computer network being replaced by the flow of wind and the computer, a software program and its speaker replacing the metal rods of a wind chimes. Then try this link. If it does not play you may need to install a free program. [In order for this to work you will have to have installed or download and install the free sound player called RealPlayer. It is not necessary to pay for their more advanced version. (now defunct?)   Such technology is common but I need some web sites that can demonstrate the live voice. Please do a web search. Can you find anything new? [Use the right search technique to hunt for the phrase "electronic voice" and as of November 17, 1998 Alta Vista found 1679 pages that used this phrase and 528 pages that discuss "electronic speech".]
Nose	Thought. What scent should pervade your web site? Think of the nose as a sensor for gases. Electronic sensors for gases are available (e.g., smoke detectors) but connecting them to computers can be more expensive. Projection of smells via computer requires smell synthesizers attached to your personal computer and these are still in development, but close to being marketed. I need some web sites that can demonstrate the live detection and/or broadcast of gases (smells). Can you find anything new? Please do a web search. Several search terms are useful: electronic nose; gas chromatography; smell camera; chemical olfaction; smell generators; odor synthesizers; aromatherapy. Here are some sources of information found so far: Sniffman, portable electronic device, from Germany Selling smell synthesizers: Digitscents-Savor the World. Background on smell ; Research: Scientific American Update ;  E-Noses & Their Applications ;  EEV Chemical Sensor Systems ;  JPL Electronic Nose ; Review: the Electronic Nose, worldwide. Recent article: Charles Platt, "You've got smell!" Wired, (Nov. 1999). pp.257-263. Quote: "A typical scent using the Bellenson-Smith encoding format, can be defined with less than 2 Kbytes of data."
Tongue	Background on taste ; Univ. Texas Research into an electronic tongue on a chip research:Electronic Tongue articles; News report. Think of the tongue as a sensor for liquids. Such sensors are common but I need some web sites that can demonstrate the live detection of acidity, salt levels and so forth. Please do a web search. Can you find anything new? [Use the right search technique to hunt for the phrase "electronic tongue" and as of November 17, 1998 Alta Vista found 52 pages that used this phrase.]
Internet-related Compositions that integrate most or all of the above.	The Millenium Bug ; the email story behind the bug that demonstrates the nonlinear serendipity of the Net.

Some research projects involve areas that are so sensitive to visitation and study that sensors and multimedia systems are being used to keep people away. Such projects connect video, audio, sensors, computers, and wireless networking in Marine Preserves. The Race Rocks site is "a marine reserve in the southern Canadian Pacific Ocean, just a handful of miles off the coast of Vancouver, British Columbia. The islands of Race Rocks make up an unusually rich ecosystem literally teeming with life, from invertebrates and fish in its many tide pools, to birds and mammals on its rocks and in the sea." Other research projects cover such vast areas that only large territorial grids of sensors can cover the territory effectively.

 

Sensor Bibliography

• A long list of collections of other Interesting Devices Connected to the Net
• Thomas Register. This company provides a very comprehensive catalog of manufacturing products. Though you must have a user name and password to use their catalog, you can get one for free by filling out their registration form. Once at their home search page, search for the word sensor to retrieve hundreds of types of sensors and contact information for the companies that sell them. These sensors could be hooked to devices connected to computers. If you would like for someone with electronics background to wire a sensor to your classroom computer, ask for such a person through your school newsletter and generally a parent with electronics background will take an interest in  your project.
• Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, An international journal devoted to research and development of chemical transducers.
• Protein Explorer, software to analyze molecular structure
• Sensor Magazine, a trade magazine for scientists and engineers about sensors.
• Science Magazine online
• eBlocks : Embedded Systems Building Blocks