Applications of Arduino Microcontroller in Student Projects in a Community College

The Arduino microcontroller has been incorporated in our community college student projects, including interface with GPS receiver for the application of measuring ionospheric disturbance. Our Arduino microcontroller was designed with an ATmega328 chip that enables the training of our community college students to work on the CUNY miniaturized satellite (CubeSat) project at the NASA critical review phase. The Arduino teaching protocol was implemented with our experience in teaching the National Instruments LabVIEW controlled data acquisition board and Lego Mindstorms NXT programming lessons. Particular satellite engineering criteria, such as power consumption, interface algorithm, etc., are highlighted in contrast to those criteria in a typical data acquisition environment. The operation timing issue in CubeSat module necessitates the inclusion of number crunching in the Arduino lessons as well. Arduino microcontroller application was found to be supportive in a laser lab class where students learn about general lab control and data acquisition techniques in addition to their laser work. Less critical applications such as FM detection with Arduino microcontrollers are popular in hobby electronics and readily attract the attention of students in introductory lab sessions. Currently an application of the Arduino microcontroller in field operation is being developed with Brookhaven National Lab to strengthen our engineering technology curriculum. Extension to the use of Arduino microcontroller in atmospheric disturbance studies is also discussed.