Briefly investigate a natural phenomenon and identify a sensor that may be able to measure this phenomenon. Add a link to the distributer's website (i.e Sparkfun or Adafruit).
There are approaches to measure an aurora borealis with the help of seismographs:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/29/aurora-borealis-earthquake-sensors-detect-northern-lights-alaska/5538759002/
For Arduino I found a lot of DIY-sensors:
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/mircemk/sensitive-mpu6050-seismometer-with-data-logger-9e6bf5
Bin:
A phenomenon I find interesting is the different qualities of light throughout the day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_hour
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hour_(photography)
To measure that quality, we could use a combination of sensors:
Spectral colour sensor: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4698 or https://www.adafruit.com/product/3779
Real time Clock: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3013
Some sort of sensor to measure how to diffuse / focused the light is. Sadly, I could not find such a sensor.
Silvan:
Wassersensor:
Sensor for detecting the presence of water such as in rainfall.
101020018 - Grove - Water Sensor, Seeed Studio
Distrelec Article Number: 300-69-804
Janosch & Miguel
Attached are two videos which demonstrate what is possible with Ultra Wide Band (UWB). Indoor tracking with distance and angle. Miguel and I would like to look into this technology further. Would it be possible to order chips (DWM1000) like this?
Sandro
A natural phenomena I picked was the development of dew in the morning. This could be measured with this sensor:
Elena
to measure the lake level after a rainfall one could use such a liquid level sensor. Maybe two stacked on top of each other for a longer range.https://www.adafruit.com/product/1786
Johannes
Not a too extravagant natural phenomena I chose: Volcanic Eruption. (Could be obviously used for a lot of different ones as well)
Mainly because the sensor looks interesting to me.
It’s a thermal imaging module with the camera core made by FLIR. Found it interesting to see a module with such a high resolution in that price scale. Mostly does IR-Sensors have a resolution of around 32x32 which makes them quite limiting for recognition purposes.
Here the link to the sensor:
Another sensor I didn’t choose (asked Paulina before if it would be possible to get one) but is really nice is a string potentiometer. Know them from my working experiences. As far as I know you don’t have one at the lab. These are not as common, but super useful in certain situations (non linear motion, no clear view on travel distance, interference from outside, material constrains, spacial constraints).
Because they are not that common, there aren’t any good cheap variants on the western markets. You mostly find professional sensors in the range of upwards of a thousand franks.
Searched for them on aliexpress and actually found something that is “affordable”. Would be super cool to have one of those in the lab if needed.