Clubs

MYOSOTIS PROJECT HIGHLIGHTED IN JN … AND ON RTP (news with video)

On Friday 14th June, the Aver-o-Mar School Group held its Intercultural Festival. Among the dozens of initiatives that marked this day and which we will report on in future publications, one deserved top honours in Saturday’s edition of the JN and was, on the morning of the same day, one of the news items highlighted by University Professor Felisbela Lopes, on RTP 1, in her “Press Review”. The article, written by journalist Ana Trocado Marques and photographed by Pedro Correia, is entitled “Students create app that alerts you to children forgotten in the car”

This project, which internally has been named the Miosótis project, is coordinated by teacher Fátima Morais and involves 8th grade students Ema Pinheiro, Diana Faria, Tiago Costa and Dinis Costa, members of the Robotics Club, coordinated by Prof António Cunha, which has also been the basis of other award-winning projects, as we recently highlighted when the Galp Energy Up2024 Grand Prize was awarded.

This project, whose prototype version was tested, was formally presented on the 14th in the presence of members of the municipality, which also provided the car for the experiment, and the DGEstE, specifically the Northern Regional Delegate, Dr Luís Lobo, Dr Ana Paula Lopes, from the Delegate Support Unit and Dr Luís Lopes, coordinator of Autonomy and Curricular Flexibility in the north. As well as getting to know the Miosótis project in detail, where they spoke to the students and the teacher in charge, they visited the Robotics Club space, where António Cunha explained in detail how our meteorological station and seismic station work, as well as other ongoing projects, especially the liaison with Municipal Civil Protection. The need to “increase and requalify the space” was presented, as the challenges are many, challenging and innovative, with a growing number of students involved.

On 5 July there will be the regional final of the Apps for Goods candidate projects, where the school will be present, as it has two projects among the 20 finalists! The other, about the “Sustainable Greenhouse”, involving 5th graders and coordinated by Prof Filipe Santos, was also explained to those present, initiatives that were very much appreciated.

We also share the video in which Felisbela Lopes highlights the work done in public schools, referring to this project, so the educational community of Agrupamento de Escolas de Aver-o-Mar is once again to be congratulated!

JN news: JN miosotis news

RTP video:

WEATHER STATION ON NEW PLATFORMS AND WITH NEW DATA

The weather station at Agrupamento de Escolas de Aver-o-Mar, which is currently being run by the Robotics Club, a project resulting from an application from the Ciência Viva programme, has, as of today, been transmitting new data and also has new transmission platforms.

The work carried out, which has António Cunha as its driving force, proved to be unsuitable for the initial platform, as we already had data that the Weather Underground platform didn’t support, hence the need to look for other alternatives, and information is already being transmitted to PWS Weather.

Under the teacher’s guidance, 147 lines of embedded code were recorded for the ATMega 2560 elecronic circuit, 168 lines of python for the interface between the microcontroller and the Weather Underground and PWS Weather platforms, with the new data being transmitted in real time: rainfall, wind, pressure, total daily, monthly and annual rainfall. All the sensors communicate via OneWire and i2c protocols, some analogue and others simple digital.

The station, installed in the Clubs area, is connected to 2 real-time rain gauges, 1 wind speed sensor, 1 outdoor humidity and temperature sensor (AM2301) and a Bosch BMP280 pressure sensor. Since both the 2 rain gauges and the BMP280 sensor use i2c, they are each being addressed individually only at their transmission address, on the same bus, so it was necessary to calculate the addresses in 7-bit precision, an extra job that allows us to use a total of 128 sensors. In more technical terms, for example, the atmospheric pressure sensor is at address 0x77, while the rain gauges are respectively at 0x7d and 0x7b, code developed by the students.

It’s been very interesting to see the growing number of students getting involved in the activities and joining the Club, not least because the challenges don’t stop: creating working documentation in a multilingual version, so as to contribute to inclusion practices in the school, and the development of a logo for the station, or even a mascot, are also on the horizon, as well as challenges that will make us surf much bigger waves!

The application can be accessed on a computer, tablet or mobile phone, which is why we recommend installing it. Please note that you need to select the type of degree in which you want to view it when you enter the menu (choose “celcius” for WU or “metric” for PWS) and select the location [Aver-o-Mar]: PWSWeather – Bring Your Weather to Life.

You can also access the station’s data from the menu on the school’s website, in the top right-hand corner. It’s a source of great pride for the community to see the name of the school, the town and the city being taken around the world, as these projects and platforms are of international calibre!

Congratulations to everyone involved!

We share some records of the PWS platform’s programming and panel activities