Meeting with Canford School 23Nov17

[Penri]

Hello all

Terry and I, along with Greg and Nick, met with David and Geoff from Canford School today. David we've met before, he's responsible for communities liaison and places pupils into various communities projects as they come up. Geoff teaches physics and maths and used to work, as an engineer, for Rolls Royce at their commercial engine division in Derby, David though he'd better understand what we were doing and what the opportunities for pupils were.

Anyway we gave them the 5p tour and introduced Geoff to the Water Sustainability programme, what we'd done, where we are and what we're planning.
He understood, was interested and asked some intelligent questions.

Geoff also mentioned an acronym, I've forgotten what, but the essence is that it means that pupils can do some research or real STEM stuff, write it up and have it marked, success equals 1/2 an A level; Canford encourages proper, hands dirty (in the engineering sense so software counts) projects. He thought there were opportunities in what we discussed with him for the pupils to use our project tasks as suitable subjects for such a purpose.

At the conclusion of the meeting we were asked to send over an e-mail as a reminder of the areas we had in mind, that's pasted below. Terry as I write this I remember we touched briefly on the water wheel flow sensor, I forgot to add it. I'll discuss with you, Clive, and add it back in a little later perhaps, apparently they have a water tunnel at the school, I took that to mean like a wind tunnel but with water, could be useful!

Hello David,


Thanks to you and Geoff for meeting us today, we enjoyed showing you both what we’re doing and I hope you saw some potential opportunities and value in it for your students.

We have a programme of work for the future that seeks to deliver a solution that meets the requirements that have been defined for the project. We are undertaking the programme in phases, designing, evaluating and prototyping sub-elements as we go and then integrating the successful ones in to the system. We are ever mindful that the solution needs to be reliable, easy to maintain and affordable plus must add value to Wimborne Model Town (WMT) as an attraction and to support its educational aims.

The areas were are currently engaged in, solutions for which would further the project in this phase and we think would be interesting to STEM students are:

Water depth sensors
We have prototyped and implemented 2 different types of discrete level measuring sensors, both measuring 100mm depth increments. The current solution works well enough for us to implement a prototype control system but we would like alternative solutions to be considered, prototyped and trialled. While discrete level probes, as implemented, are acceptable from a control viewpoint, it would make for a better user interface experience if we could track the levels in smaller increments, perhaps 10mm or less.


Automated control of water valves
We have been unable to find low cost water valves that can work with the low water pressures we have and that we can control automatically. We have started investigating the possibility of automating various manual water valves like those usually used in fish pond applications. Possible solutions need to be formulated, prototyped and trialled.


Visual user interface (GUI/HCI) for the visitors and WMT management and staff
We want to provide 2 levels of user interface: one for WMT staff to manage and/or override the automatic river control system plus for the control system to report problems to them; the other for educating visitors, to show how the system works, how water is harvested and used plus the levels and flows at various points, and to deliver an environmental sustainability message. We have not made a start on this activity so this would be great opportunity for someone interested in web site design to develop a dynamic and interesting human interface for the river system.


Mathematical / software modelling of the complete river system
All the work done so far has been undertaken based on a “first guess” of how the river system works and how it responds to external stimuli: evaporation, leaks, rainfall, etc. We are refining this guess as more knowledge is being gained from the measurement of depth and flows we have now being able to take, but it would be really helpful to have a model or simulation of the system a) to help us in the design and test of the system b) as an attraction for our visitors, allowing them to vary parameters and see how that river would react as part of the visual interface.


The above are the areas we discussed this afternoon, Geoff also asked that we add any further topics we were looking at, so with that in mind here are a couple of opportunities / challenges we are starting to kick around:
Low cost ethernet switch/interface for the Raspberry Pi zeros that will be managing each functional area of the system
A common design for a low cost configurable interface for each sensor and control node
Both these would involve electronics design and development, perhaps firmware or programmable device configuration, PCB layout and manufacture (maybe via a third-party), final assembly and integration of the finished article. We’re early in the thought process on both and have not sized the tasks so there would be opportunities, in whole or in part with these.

As we move forward with the programme further areas are bound to rear their heads.

I hope that gives you a bit more “meat of the bones” and enough to start the discussion with your pupils. If you have any questions or want further clarification please do not hesitate in contacting me.

OK, that's all from me now.


Hwyl

Penri

[hamishmb]

Sounds like very good news

[Penri]

Hello

The meeting with the Canford School pupils went well on Tuesday (5th) afternoon; they have been asked to write up the outline proposals for what they'd like to tackle, based on the opportunities we presented, see above, by next Tuesday.

Hwyl

Penri