The Bell Ringer

Rain gauges offer “outside the textbook” learning

Shellie Smitley, Staff Writer“One of the things that we have been doing over the last four or five years is getting more into micro-controllers,” Andy Hauger, professor of physics, said.He said students under his advisement and in cooperation with the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy are taking advantage of some of the latest technology to build devices that require interdisciplinary approaches.“… We are taking electrical sensors and we’re controlling and measuring things with these things called micro-controllers…and then we can use that to collect data or put that data on a website or use that data to control something…,” Hauger said.Hauger said that during a summer internship, Michael Roeber, a computer science major, was the student that “led the program” by developing all of the electronics.“He (Roeber) took (a rain gauge)…and set that into an Arduino and was able to put a …T-Mobile card, SMS, and it can take that information and text that to another one of these with another cell phone card …so we have these sensors that are out in the woods….and they can actually send that rainfall to a collection point and then that collection point eventually will be able to display water fall,” Hauger said.“Arduino is an open-source prototyping platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software,” according to arduino.cc.The plan is to put dozens of them around the county. Currently, there are five around the county that are working, according to Hauger.
February 16, 2016

Rain gauges offer “outside the textbook” learning

ROTC students walk in honor

The Bell Ringer