May 22 and 29, 2025 Where Data Meets Dirt: Computing with Raspberry Pi for Soil Quality Monitoring
On May 22nd and May 29th, 2025, Circuit Revival welcomed back mentor Mr. David Xu to lead a special two-part Soil Quality Monitoring with Raspberry Pi workshop at Algoma University. The fully interactive sessions prioritized hands-on learning, with students assembling, configuring, and coding their own soil moisture monitoring systems from scratch.
Mr. Xu began with an introduction to Raspberry Pi’s role as an accessible tool for environmental sensing and open-source innovation. He explained the basics of soil quality monitoring, the importance of real-time data, and how microcontrollers like the Raspberry Pi can empower sustainable solutions. Students then followed step-by-step demos, walking through installing Raspbian OS on SD cards, setting up their devices, and connecting Grove soil moisture sensors.
Each pair of students received a Raspberry Pi 5 starter kit and a Grove sensor kit, tasked with wiring up the soil moisture sensor, flashing Raspbian OS onto SD cards, and collaboratively troubleshooting boot and hardware connection processes. Attendees explored Linux CLI navigation, wrote Python scripts to read sensor data and control GPIO pins, and installed dependencies via terminal command, all under Mr. Xu’s guidance.
Highlights included real-time debugging challenges, calibrating sensors for accurate readings, and displaying live soil moisture data on connected screens. By workshop’s end, teams had built functional prototypes that monitored soil moisture and visualized the results, demonstrating practical skills in open-source hardware-software integration and environmental monitoring. The experience equipped students with tangible skills in sensor interfacing, data visualization, and collaborative problem-solving, reinforcing Raspberry Pi’s role as a gateway to innovation in sustainability.
Instructor slides to the Soil Quality Monitoring Workshop – Credit Instructor David Xu.
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