California Wild Fire Science - Let's Build a Weather Station With Microbit

California Wildfires are becoming more frequent and more intense, and the fire season is starting earlier in the spring and extending later into autumn. This is an extremely alarming local phenomenon for my middle school students who are living in San Jose.

Although the weather can naturally change, human-caused climate change is making fire weather in the West much worse. Rising global temperatures result in earlier snowmelt, hotter summers, warmer nights, and reduced rainfall. These changes make forests drier and more likely to burn.

In 2024, California recorded more than 8,000 wildfires, destroying 1,837 structures and damaging an additional 644. Over 1,077,711 acres were burned, which is the size of the state of Delaware, covering 1,982 square miles. Finally, the total economic loss for the year is estimated between $250 billion and $275 billion.

Facing these local natural disasters, I will challenge my 6th-grade students to explore Wildfire Science. We will learn how to predict the wildfire, especially in the data collection process with Mictobit, and graphing with the laptop using the Radio Sensors between two Microbits.

This is directly aligned with the Weather and the Climate Change, NGSS Science standards for 6th grade. This project is inspired by the local research university, San Jose State, Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center Director, Dr. Craig Clements.

Microbits and all extra materials/equipment

1. 6 Microbits: 1 Temperature Sensor and 1 Receiver

1 Humidity Sensor and 1 Receiver

1 Soil Moisture Sensor and 1 Receiver

1. 3 Chromebooks to data log
2. Stevenson Screen (Instrument Shelter) 12 in x 12in x 9 in

Made of wood, with the louvered door design on 4 sides of the shelter.

1.18 mmx 32mm x 1 m balsa wood strips

2. 5mm plywood

3. 4 gas vents

4. 2 hinges

5. 6mm wooden dowels for jointing the wood strips

6. Screws to fix the 4 vents

7. Paint - white topcoat

1. Arduino Generic parts: 1. Humidity Sensor

1. Soil Moisture Sensor

Please follow the instructions https://www.instructables.com/Stevenson-Screen-weather-station/

Thanks to mattinflow for the great idea of the Stevenson Screen. For my students' Microbit weather station, a smaller instrument shelter will be perfect.

First, make code for the temperature sensor. Second, I added the Radio communication code. Lastly, I built code for Data Logging (you must download the code set from the Extension) for the second Microbit.

The moisture sensor needs to be connected to the Microbit by the wire that has one end, an Alligator clip, and the other end, a female jumper connector. Aligator clips should be connected to the Ground, P0, and P3 ports of the Microbit.

The Soil Moisture Detection Module for Arduino is compatible with Microbit. You insert the soil moisture sensor into the soil and start collecting data.

A humidity sensor is an add-on device to the Microbit. DHT11 is an adoptable module for Microbit. To code the humidity sensor, first go to the Extension, then type DHT11 in the search box. Then I downloaded the code set.

In this folder, I collected many videos to show you how the two Microbits communicate and keep logging directly on the laptop. Also, there is a video of a brief explanation of how to download the data file and convert it into a data display.

This is my project reflection.