Exploring soil moisture sensors

Overview

• In this lesson we are going to connect to a soil moisture sensor.
• The soil moisture sensor is connected to an Arduino MKR 1300 microcontroller (a small computer).
• The data will be transmitted to the LoRa network.
• LoRa is short for Long Range radio communication.
• The data is then sent to The Things Network, which is a community run server that collects data from sensors and makes the data available for download.
• We will download the data to our Raspberry Pi, and in future lessons display that data in a Dashboard using Node-RED.
• All these skills are very important in helping to address Climate Change and general Environmental Sustainability issues the world faces.

Learning Objectives

• Learn how to connect to The Things Network using MQTT using Node-Red
• Learn how to extract specific data from JSON formatted data packets

Connecting to the Things network using Node-RED

• In this lesson we are going to use Node-RED as our main programming tool.
• Node-RED is a block or node based programming language.
• Each block has a discrete function and some blocks can contain Javascript code or be configured in different ways.
• Blocks are connected together using wires.
• Node-RED and the programs on the Raspberry Pi are always being updated, so it’s normally good practise to update our Raspberry Pi on a regular basis.

Updating and Upgrading the Raspberry Pi

• Open the Raspberry Pi Terminal.
• Enter the command sudo apt-get update