The Seeeduino group of pre-fabricated boards (an
Arduino compatible board) is sometimes used to teach
about embedded sensors in micro-electronics. The stalker
line of Seeeduino board shown in Fig. 2 already includes a
low-power programmable micro-processor, the
AtMega328P and associated circuitry that allows the
connection or addition of one or more modular/functional
devices such as low-power sensors/wireless radio
transmitters alongside basic components such as resistors.
The stalker board (Fig. 2) which may be powered from a
+5v source such as a universal serial bus (USB) port or a
battery or from a solar panel device, also includes a real
time clock (RTC) circuitary (crystal, chip and CR2032
battery).
At the Telecommunications/ICT for Development
(T/ICT4D) Laboratory of the International Centre for
Theoretical Phyics (ICTP) located in Trieste, Italy, the
Seeeduino stalker v2 board is used in several practical
experiments on wireless sensor networking. A
fundamental experiment where the intended learning
outcome is to introduce the learner to using the board
involves the use of the pre-fabricated board in driving a
Light Emitting Diode (LED). The experiment requires 2
additional components, an external resistor and light
emitting diode in addition to the pre-fabricated board.
Power to the board is obtained from a personal computer
(or laptop) running the integrated development
environment (IDE) supplied by the board manufacturer.
The IDE which is used to program the board for this
experiment loads the example code (Fig. 3) that may be
used to pulse the LED at different frequencies.