Hardware Carpentry

[amandawhitmire]

I'm not sure if this falls under SWC or DC, but I've tweeted a bit about the idea of developing a "hardware carpentry" (HT: Jonah came up with the name). I think there is interest in this. I'll be developing a curriculum for this at my institution, and am more than happy to do this under the Carpentries umbrella.

I am in the very early stages of thinking about this, but the focus is on ~Arduino microcontrollers, how they work, circuits, programming them, building a sensor, I/O, etc. Not sure if there is room, but maybe a module on ~Raspberry Pi stuff. I'll have more work on this done in the next couple of weeks.

[crdietrich]

I like the idea, I spent some time with our local Python user group doing Hardware Night meetups. My experiences where similar to SWC setup - building the environment takes a good amount of time. Additionally, finding serial ports and network connections make portability challenging. To that end though, the Raspberry Pi does make a consistent platform for teaching.

There are two suppliers that I like their resources: https://learn.adafruit.com/ https://learn.sparkfun.com/ Both are a bit product based, but their content is pretty good.

[anacost]

Introduction to the Internet of Things (IoT) in the lesson format: https://uiohive.github.io/IoT_arduino_nano/

[ErinBecker]

@anacost, @crdietrich, @amandawhitmire - We've just created The Carpentries Incubator GH organization to provide a single point of entry for community members to share lesson materials and discuss ideas for new lessons. Your lesson materials were previously listed in the lesson-ideas repo, which has now been deprecated. All of the issues in that repo have been migrated here. We're still working on organizing this repo, so please do let me know if you have ideas for how best to organize this information to make it accessible to the community.

[ErinBecker]

@anacost - any interest in hosting the UIO Hive lesson in the Incubator? Let me know if you're interested and I'd be happy to facilitate.

[annefou]

@ErinBecker That's a very good idea! Thanks @anacost for mentionning our lesson!

[ErinBecker]

@annefou - great! Happy to have this lesson in the Incubator. It looks like you're already using The Carpentries lesson template, so the only things required in order to include this lesson in the Incubator is a confirmation that the lesson a) has a CC-BY or CC-0 license and b) conforms to our Code of Conduct. Once those two requirements are fulfilled, I'll grant you access to transfer the repo to the Incubator. Let me know if you have any questions!

[ErinBecker]

Hey @annefou and @anacost - just checking in to see if you're still interested in migrating the UIO Hive lessons to the Incubator. We're having some discussion sessions around the Incubator later this month and next and trying to increase visibility of materials hosted there, so it would be a good time to move things over if you'd like more eyes on / users on the lessons. Let me know what you think!

[annefou]

@ErinBecker Yes we are ready to move the UiO Hive lessons to the Incubator. We are all set with the license https://uiohive.github.io/IoT_arduino_nano/LICENSE.html (CC BY 4.0 license as for Carpentries lessons) and follow the Carpentries Code of Conduct (https://uiohive.github.io/IoT_arduino_nano/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.html).

We will definitely participate to the community discussion around the incubator. Thanks!

[ErinBecker]

Great to hear @annefou! I've just sent you an invitation to join the carpentries-incubator organization. This will give you the ability to transfer your repos over. You'll need to go into each of the repos settings pages and click "transfer this repository" (in the danger zone). Once you've done that, I can accept the transfer and get things set up to have your lessons populate in the Incubator.

(Alternatively, you can give me ownership on your repo and I can transfer it for you, if you prefer that route.)

[limako]

Hi. I'm coming late to the party, but I'm developing a new class called "Open Science Instrumentation and Data Collection" where students will learn to use the Raspberry Pi and Arduino ecosystems to make scientific instruments (i.e. connect to sensors, collect & transform data, etc.). I'm tentatively planning to develop my instructional materials using the SWC template. I'm still putting together the full list of topics, but "hardware carpentry" sounds like a natural home for much of what I'm proposing to develop.

[fmichonneau]

@limako, ICYMI there is a lesson on using Arduino here: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/IoT_arduino_nano/ (GitHub repo here: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/IoT_arduino_nano/) in case it's useful and want to start contributing there!

[limako]

Thanks much! I'll check it out. With the start of the new semester, I'm working on my course development project full time now. I'm tentatively planning to have my students program their arduino devices via command line from a raspberry pi. I'm working up lessons on setting up the raspberry pi, using the GPIO, and then interfacing with and programming an arduino.

[limako]

I've posted the alpha version of my first lesson https://limako.github.io/rpi-arduino/ Feedback welcome!

I've also submitted it to the incubator proposals with the goal of it serving within a "hardware carpentry" universe of materials: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/proposals/issues/36