Peter Ananin's DIXD Blog

The components of my project will consist of:

• Instructions/manual Initial setup (paper format or web based)

• Biosphere: Container: which supports and maintains life forms enabling close proximity studies

• Biological elements

• Monitor and sensors(data capture): sensors and video camera

• Control and change of conditions(optional)

• Data base

• Website: Log in and sharing

• Social Network

(Diagram showing all components)

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Components I will focus on:

-The container design: shape and method of connecting modules

-Sensors

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Less important components:

- basic website, fake possibly using Flash as offline version

-Social Network, don’t worry about

Here is a brief summary of the insights I gathered during the phase 1 process.

Nature

• Regular and ease of Acessiblity to natural systems was a key to Joshua (during his wildlife walks or plants within his house)

• Serendipity( when we discover things we are not searching for) is important to bring individuals back in line with nature through being surprising and revealing. Eilidh, Art and Philosophy

• The surprise Eilidh talked of was also seen by aquarium owners who noticed unexpected changes or their creatures showing their individual personalities.

• The rejuvenation and relaxation provided by having nature within their surroundings whether it be lying outside or distracting themselves from their computer by looking into an aquarium, Dominic, Nancy and Ruth.

• Individuals especially kids enjoy simply putting things together and the construction phase is very much a social one where sharing of parts and ideas occur.

Lego

• Parts from different kits end up mixed together to create new creations thanks to the ability for lego’s universal connections. I will use this research to work out the best way to connect the different modules.

• Lego allows all ages to share, learn and build with each other with unlimited imagination. It allows more complex constructions with stories to go along with them for older users but is simple and easy enough to be understood for younger users from the start. My friend Davie talks of his enjoyment of building things out of lego with his son.

Other Feedback

• An interviewee suggested calling it PlanItEarth in which a kit could allow himself and his son to put a mini world together by adding different ingredients and changing factors such as temperature you can prolong or speed up changes in your earth. Through experimenting with their own planetary ingredients they can observe and learn about how the real world works. Jeremy

• Jeremy also talked of his own enjoyment along with his kids at watching and celebrating the transformation of tadpoles into frogs and their different needs. Tadpole made easy kits could be part of my project.

Reflection on phase 1

Looking back through phase 1 I think I spent a bit too much time reading books on the subject which meant I had lots of research to collate. That time could have been used more on drawing up aesthetically pleasing prototypes diagrams but I feel I will have enough time for this early on in phase 2,

I feel overall the research went well and brought up some interesting insights, although the difficulties with doing research in a school meant I had to focus on a slightly older research group than I had hoped.

I found building respect takes a long time to develop  with my project research time being relatively short I feel I need to focus on simply increasing understanding of earths life support systems which would eventually lead to respect in the long run. Understanding is also a lot easier to measure than respect which is quite an abstract aspect.

In order to represent the input data in a visually pleasing way I have looked for pre existing online graphs.

Highcharts Demo Gallery

Highcharts is a charting library using javascript offering intuituve and interactive charts for websites. I have chose a combination chart which I should be able to send the input data through PHP.

(Diagram above shows how the data stored on the specific computer into PHP for use by the website to be visualised.)

Another website which allows you to display data as embedded graphs and visual representatives is Pachube:

Pachube uses secure sharing through its use of secure sharing keys/ API keys which allows the transfer of sets of data from devices to websites securely.

http://apps.pachube.com/

https://pachube.com/feeds/3194

Google code also has a nice source of graphs which can be embedded into a webpage:

Chart Editor

Google Code Playground

Icon Custom or marker drag
Google Code Playground

My workstation during phase 1; including research books, insight sheets, research probes and my initial biosphere prototype.

Today i worked on getting a basic light sensor to detect light directed onto the biosphere. Then the arduino sends the byte data back to my laptop and displays it as a graph I made in processing. I need some other factors to measure to create relationships so I have ordered a temperature and moisture sensor which I will process graphs for as well(viewed side by side).

(Light sensor detecting light directed onto biosphere)

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Graph

I have been looking at the sensors that are available for me to use within my device and have found the following to be most affordable. The most affordable seem to be the waterproof sensor from Sparkfun, humidity and temperature sensor DHT 22 and a standard LDR.

I would quite like to include a pH sensor kit but at £61 it might be a little expensive for my project but I may be able to get it through the University.  pH Sensor Kit – SparkFun Electronics

First of all I wanted to find out why people keep aquariums? and from my research it revealed that:

• They gained great satisfaction from caring for and feeding their miniature ecosystems.

Uses for aquariums:

• As an educational tool for parents to teach their children about how ecosystems work such as the effect of pH on fish or the effect of healthy plants producing oxygen for the fish.

• Aquariums have also been shown to improve the disposition and attentiveness of children especially those who are diagnosed with ADHD, who I may be working with ( Focus On Exceptional Children, Dec, 1997).

From speaking to aquarium owners I found that they enjoyed the whole process of designing, building and maintaining their aquariums.

First they choose the type of fish or creature which they would like to house. In my biospheres, users would ask a question then build their biosphere to answer that question.

Then they build their environment/system around it to replicate its natural habitat.

Most of their learning of how to set up an aquarium comes from reading aquarium magazines(practical fish keeping), books and watching videos online.

One aquarium owner chose to start their aquarium as they simple loved fish since they where a child but didn’t choose to have an aquarium till they were older when they felt they could responsibly take care of an aquarium.

Aquarium owners often have their aquariums within their living rooms and even when they are watching television they find themselves looking over and staring into their aquariums in order to relax. They enjoy watching their fish for their individual personalities and for them to do something unexpected/ surprising.

Some aquarium owners use aquarium blogs to share their aquariums or solve problems:
Converting to Live Plants – Switching From Plastic to Live Aquarium Plants

Nature Aquariums & Aquascapes of Samit Roy

I recently noticed aquariums in a Chinese restaurant in Scarborough as well as the train station in York which provide an enjoyable and relaxing addition to the space as well as a distraction while you wait for your train.

When looking at pre existing social media websites around  sharing ecology research projects
and knowledge based around ecosystems, I found a website in which 9th grade students from Arizona recorded and shared their ecosystem projects. They began their project by visiting biosphere 2 the worlds largest closed system which contains an artificial rainforest, desert, grassland and small scale ocean. Then they returned to the classroom to collect, construct, and observe their own small self contained worlds which contained a terrestrial, decomposition and aquatic section.

The students documented their creating an observation of their mini worlds over a 2 month period which provided the basis for the Eco bottle investigations portfolio.

Eco-Bottle Treehouse Project

Ecobottle Investigations Portfolio

This is also another website which runs an online teachers tool to teach bottle biology in 8 online guided sessions. Creating building blocks out of plastic bottle which can be combined together to create any number of ecosystems to explore science, nature and the environment. This system shows how the world interacts and maintains itself.

Life Science | Bottle Biology

I also found some forums which people chatted about their eco bottles which could prove to be useful.

This forum wasn’t effective as it shows it was only used a few times during 2004.

Life Science | Bottle Biology

This is another forum/ wiki I found which a student used to track the changes within the eco bottle that they had as well as the tests they performed. They created a wiki so that it could easily be created and shared.

Terrestrial – Eco-column Wiki

Online labs by Smart Science education uses warm up questions to get users thinking about what questions they wish to answer. Users then predict, run their project then discuss their results online.

Smart Science® Education Units for Approved AP Labs and Only Online Labs

GLOBE Program

The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program is a worldwide hands-on, primary and secondary school-based science and education program. GLOBE’s vision promotes and supports students, teachers and scientists to collaborate on inquiry-based investigations of the environment and the Earth system working in close partnership with NASA, NOAA and NSF Earth System Science Projects (ESSP‘s) in study and research about the dynamics of Earth’s environment.

The measurements conducted by the students include air temperature, cloud observations, precipitation, surface water temperature and pH, soil moisture, biometrics, land cover assessment and species identification. Students also share findings and communicate with other students using e-mail from the web site.

*ecology: The branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.

This week I set about using old water cooler containers to build my prototype biospheres with multiple levels: Hydrosphere, Lithosphere and Atmosphere. I built this prototype based upon my eco column research.

After Contacting Eden Springs who supplies the University with water cooler containers they said they would be happy to supply me with empty containers for my project.

I used a piece of cotton fabric as a wick to connect the lower layer with the top layer with a water supply. After a short period of time the Biosphere has started to generate a moist warm environment suitable for small insects to thrive.

Empty water cooler containers are ideal for building multi level biospheres as they fit together neatly, are large enough for creatures and come with a handle for easy transport. Although after testing in the studios I feel that the units are just a little too large for being used on a table top and take up a bit too much space. I could have just used these containers but I wanted to make/design them from scratch and in a slightly different shape.

I found this book called Bottle Biology which helps students of all ages to explore how ecosystems work through constructing tools out of plastic bottles.

I decided to experiment with the concept of eco columns I made one out of some plastic bottles I had lying around in the house. The Wick seemed very useful at transporting water between the aquatic and land based system which I might use to connect different systems in my final design.

I had read about Eco Columns online previously at: http://www.learner.org/courses/essential/life/bottlebio/