No abstract

It never fails: you’re in your office and the phone rings. Your department head says, “Hi! Fifty kids are coming to campus in 30 minutes. Can you meet with them and give them a one-hour hands-on activity that will make them excited about physics?” Likely you’ll run to your demonstration room and grab anything that’ll generate a bright light or cause something to explode or levitate, right? In recent years, we’ve taken a more systematic approach to hosting visitors by developing a ready-to-go hands-on activity that provides opportunities for learning about DC electric circuits.

Although mainly used by the hobby or “maker” crowd, the Arduino microcontroller has made its way into all levels of education, including physics labs. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the Arduino in this regard is the ease with which it can be interfaced and acquire data from a sensor, using any one of its many analog inputs, SPI or I2C interfaces. In this paper we wish to introduce the reader to the Sparkfun “Thing,” which is shown in Fig. 1. The “Thing” is a board that is smaller and less expensive than an Arduino, while being very similar in its programming, analog input capabilities, and support for the SPI and I2C interfaces. But here’s the real uniqueness of this board: it creates its own Wi-Fi network, just like ones we’re all used to using (for example, by our home routers). In use, one simply connects to the Thing’s Wi-Fi network using a standard device (laptop, tablet, smartphone, Chromebook, etc.) and retrieves the sensor data using a web browser. Thus, no custom programming is required, and no special software is needed by the end user. Its small size and easy access allows for all kinds of embedded and/or portable sensor applications.