How to Do Things with Sensors


Book Description

An investigation of how-to guides for sensor technologies Sensors are increasingly common within citizen-sensing and DIY projects, but these devices often require the use of a how-to guide. From online instructional videos for troubleshooting sensor installations to handbooks for using and abusing the Internet of Things, the how-to genres and formats of digital instruction continue to expand and develop. As the how-to proliferates, and instructions unfold through multiple aspects of technoscientific practices, Jennifer Gabrys asks why the how-to has become one of the prevailing genres of the digital. How to Do Things with Sensors explores the ways in which things are made do-able with and through sensors and further considers how worlds are made sense-able and actionable through the instructional mode of citizen-sensing projects. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead




Getting Started with the Internet of Things


Book Description

This hands-on introductory guide will quickly show how to program embedded devices using the .NET Micro Framework and the Netduino Plus board, and then connect these devices to the Internet using Pachube, a cloud platform for sharing real-time sensor data.




Make: Sensors


Book Description

Make: Sensors is the definitive introduction and guide to the sometimes-tricky world of using sensors to monitor the physical world. With dozens of projects and experiments for you to build, this book shows you how to build sensor projects with both Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Use Arduino when you need a low-power, low-complexity brain for your sensor, and choose Raspberry Pi when you need to perform additional processing using the Linux operating system running on that device.You'll learn about touch sensors, light sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetic sensors, as well as temperature, humidity, and gas sensors.




Program Earth


Book Description

Sensors are everywhere. Small, flexible, economical, and computationally powerful, they operate ubiquitously in environments. They compile massive amounts of data, including information about air, water, and climate. Never before has such a volume of environmental data been so broadly collected or so widely available. Grappling with the consequences of wiring our world, Program Earth examines how sensor technologies are programming our environments. As Jennifer Gabrys points out, sensors do not merely record information about an environment. Rather, they generate new environments and environmental relations. At the same time, they give a voice to the entities they monitor: to animals, plants, people, and inanimate objects. This book looks at the ways in which sensors converge with environments to map ecological processes, to track the migration of animals, to check pollutants, to facilitate citizen participation, and to program infrastructure. Through discussing particular instances where sensors are deployed for environmental study and citizen engagement across three areas of environmental sensing, from wild sensing to pollution sensing and urban sensing, Program Earth asks how sensor technologies specifically contribute to new environmental conditions. What are the implications for wiring up environments? How do sensor applications not only program environments, but also program the sorts of citizens and collectives we might become? Program Earth suggests that the sensor-based monitoring of Earth offers the prospect of making new environments not simply as an extension of the human but rather as new “technogeographies” that connect technology, nature, and people.




Sensors, Cloud, and Fog


Book Description

This book provides an in-depth understanding of Internet of Things (IoT) technology. It highlights several of today's research and technological challenges of translating the concept of the IoT into a practical, technologically feasible, and business-viable solution. It introduces two novel technologies--sensor-cloud and fog computing--as the crucial enablers for the sensing and compute backbone of the IoT. The book discusses these two key enabling technologies of IoT that include a wide range of practical design issues and the futuristic possibilities and directions involving sensor networks and cloud and fog computing environments towards the realization and support of IoT. Classroom presentations and solutions to end of chapter questions are available to instructors who use the book in their classes.




Sensing Machines


Book Description

How we are tracked, surveilled, tantalized, and seduced by machines ranging from smart watches and Roombas to immersive art installations. Sensing machines are everywhere in our world. As we move through the day, electronic sensors and computers adjust our thermostats, guide our Roombas, count our steps, change the orientation of an image when we rotate our phones. There are more of these electronic devices in the world than there are people—in 2020, thirty to fifty billion of them (versus 7.8 billion people), with more than a trillion expected in the next decade. In Sensing Machines, Chris Salter examines how we are tracked, surveilled, tantalized, and seduced by machines ranging from smart watches and mood trackers to massive immersive art installations. Salter, an artist/scholar who has worked with sensors and computers for more than twenty years, explains that the quantification of bodies, senses, and experience did not begin with the surveillance capitalism practiced by Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google but can be traced back to mathematical and statistical techniques of the nineteenth century. He describes the emergence of the “sensed self,” investigating how sensor technology has been deployed in music and gaming, programmable and immersive art environments, driving, and even eating, with e-tongues and e-noses that can taste and smell for us. Sensing technology turns our experience into data; but Salter’s story isn’t just about what these machines want from us, but what we want from them—new sensations, the thrill of the uncanny, and magic that will transport us from our daily grind.




Professional Android Sensor Programming


Book Description

Learn to build human-interactive Android apps, starting with device sensors This book shows Android developers how to exploit the rich set of device sensors—locational, physical (temperature, pressure, light, acceleration, etc.), cameras, microphones, and speech recognition—in order to build fully human-interactive Android applications. Whether providing hands-free directions or checking your blood pressure, Professional Android Sensor Programming shows how to turn possibility into reality. The authors provide techniques that bridge the gap between accessing sensors and putting them to meaningful use in real-world situations. They not only show you how to use the sensor related APIs effectively, they also describe how to use supporting Android OS components to build complete systems. Along the way, they provide solutions to problems that commonly occur when using Android's sensors, with tested, real-world examples. Ultimately, this invaluable resource provides in-depth, runnable code examples that you can then adapt for your own applications. Shows experienced Android developers how to exploit the rich set of Android smartphone sensors to build human-interactive Android apps Explores Android locational and physical sensors (including temperature, pressure, light, acceleration, etc.), as well as cameras, microphones, and speech recognition Helps programmers use the Android sensor APIs, use Android OS components to build complete systems, and solve common problems Includes detailed, functional code that you can adapt and use for your own applications Shows you how to successfully implement real-world solutions using each class of sensors for determining location, interpreting physical sensors, handling images and audio, and recognizing and acting on speech Learn how to write programs for this fascinating aspect of mobile app development with Professional Android Sensor Programming.




Sensor Projects with Raspberry Pi


Book Description

Start solving world issues by beginning small with simple Rasperry Pi projects. Using a free IoT server; tackle fundamental topics and concepts behind the Internet of Things. Image processing and sensor topics aren’t only applicable to the Raspberry Pi. The skills learned in this book can go own to other applications in mobile development and electrical engineering. Start by creating a system to detect movement through the use of a PIR motion sensor and a Raspberry Pi board. Then further your sensor systems by detecting more than simple motion. Use the MQ2 gas sensor and a Raspberry Pi board as a gas leak alarm system to detect dangerous explosive and fire hazards. Train your system to send the captured data to the remote server ThingSpeak. When a gas increase is detected beyond a limit, then a message is sent to your Twitter account. Having started with ThingSpeak, we’ll go on to develop a weather station with your Raspberry Pi. Using the DHT11 (humidity and temperature sensor) and BMP085 (barometric pressure and temperature sensor) in conjunction with ThingSpeak and Twitter, you can receive realtime weather alerts from your own meterological system! Finally, expand your skills into the popular machine learning world of digital image processing using OpenCV and a Pi. Make your own object classifiers and finally manipulate an object by means of an image in movement. This skillset has many applications, ranging from recognizing people or objects, to creating your own video surveillance system. With the skills developed in this book, you will have everything you need to work in IoT projects for the Pi. You can then expand your skills out further to develop mobile projects and delve into interactive systems such as those found in machine learning. What You'll LearnWork with ThingSpeak to receive Twitter alerts from your systems Cultivate skills in processing sensor inputs that are applicable to mobile and machine learning projects as well Incorporate sensors into projects to make devices that interact with more than just code Who This Book Is ForHobbyists and makers working robotics and Internet of Things areas will find this book a great resource for quick but expandable projects. Electronics engineers and programmers who would like to expand their familiarity with basic sensor projects will also find this book helpful.




Citizens of Worlds


Book Description

An unparalleled how-to guide to citizen-sensing practices that monitor air pollution Modern environments are awash with pollutants churning through the air, from toxic gases and intensifying carbon to carcinogenic particles and novel viruses. The effects on our bodies and our planet are perilous. Citizens of Worlds is the first thorough study of the increasingly widespread use of digital technologies to monitor and respond to air pollution. It presents practice-based research on working with communities and making sensor toolkits to detect pollution while examining the political subjects, relations, and worlds these technologies generate. Drawing on data from the Citizen Sense research group, which worked with communities in the United States and the United Kingdom to develop digital-sensor toolkits, Jennifer Gabrys argues that citizen-oriented technologies promise positive change but then collide with entrenched and inequitable power structures. She asks: Who or what constitutes a “citizen” in citizen sensing? How do digital sensing technologies enable or constrain environmental citizenship? Spanning three project areas, this study describes collaborations to monitor air pollution from fracking infrastructure, to document emissions in urban environments, and to create air-quality gardens. As these projects show, how people respond to, care for, and struggle to transform environmental conditions informs the political subjects and collectives they become as they strive for more breathable worlds.




Handbook of Modern Sensors


Book Description

Seven years have passed since the publication of the previous edition of this book. During that time, sensor technologies have made a remarkable leap forward. The sensitivity of the sensors became higher, the dimensions became smaller, the sel- tivity became better, and the prices became lower. What have not changed are the fundamental principles of the sensor design. They are still governed by the laws of Nature. Arguably one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived, Leonardo Da Vinci, had his own peculiar way of praying. He was saying, “Oh Lord, thanks for Thou do not violate your own laws. ” It is comforting indeed that the laws of Nature do not change as time goes by; it is just our appreciation of them that is being re?ned. Thus, this new edition examines the same good old laws of Nature that are employed in the designs of various sensors. This has not changed much since the previous edition. Yet, the sections that describe the practical designs are revised substantially. Recent ideas and developments have been added, and less important and nonessential designs were dropped. Probably the most dramatic recent progress in the sensor technologies relates to wide use of MEMS and MEOMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems and micro-electro-opto-mechanical systems). These are examined in this new edition with greater detail. This book is about devices commonly called sensors. The invention of a - croprocessor has brought highly sophisticated instruments into our everyday lives.