How To Do Things With Sensors

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

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 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.

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.

Sensor technologies and applications are evolving rapidly driven by the demand for new sensors for monitoring and diagnostic purposes to enable improvements in human health and safety. Simultaneously, sensors are required to consume less power, be autonomous, cost less, and be connected by the Internet of Things. New sensor technologies are being developed to fulfill these needs. This book reviews the latest developments in sensor technology and gives the reader an overview of the state-of-the-art in key areas, such as sensors for diagnostics and monitoring. Features Provides an overview of sensor technologies for monitoring and diagnostics applications. Presents state-of-the-art developments in selected topics for sensors that can be used for monitoring and diagnostics in future healthcare, structural monitoring, and smart environment applications. Features contributions from leading international experts in both industry and academia. Explores application areas that include medical diagnostics and screening, health monitoring, smart textiles, and structural monitoring.

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.

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.

To build electronic projects that can sense the physical world, you need to build circuits based around sensors: electronic components that react to physical phenomena by sending an electrical signal. Even with only basic electronic components, you can build useful and educational sensor projects. But if you incorporate Arduino or Raspberry Pi into your project, you can build much more sophisticated projects that can react in interesting ways and even connect to the Internet. This book starts by teaching you the basic electronic circuits to read and react to a sensor. It then goes on to show how to use Arduino to develop sensor systems, and wraps up by teaching you how to build sensor projects with the Linux-powered Raspberry Pi.