He Alkai City Council (Valencia) has created the Alcoy Citizen Kit, which seeks to bring, promote and disseminate emerging technology among citizens and the academic community at all levels. It is composed of a collection of sensors and hardware that can be connected to the municipal IoT network, easy to install and configure. The initiative will be announced at a presentation day on November 30 at 7:30pm at the Agora Oberta in Alkai.
Alkai Citizen Kit consists of three models: Environment Kit, Indoor Air Quality Kit and Community Cooperation Kit. All of them are easy to assemble and designed for the user to manipulate, experiment and learn in a simple and practical way.
Functionally, each type of kit is designed to perform a specific function. An environmental kit is a device made up of different sensors that record the climatic conditions of an indoor or outdoor space in a specific area. It measures parameters like temperature, humidity, pressure, noise or pollution.
The indoor air quality kit consists of a CO2 sensor and a traffic light sensor and an ultrasonic distance sensor. All these elements allow people to check the air quality of the place where they are installed.
Finally, the Social Collaboration Kit was designed on the Raspberry Pi 3B, with a ‘Simon Chase’ game attached so that both adults and children could play. In this way, the aim is to bring technology closer to these two age groups with educational purpose and exchange of values.
The project is completed through a web page where data is retrieved in real time and the user can consult using a password. An online training content platform has also been developed where the operation of various devices is explained and a teaching guide of operations is available.
A total of 235 kits
In total, the project has 235 kits, of which 152 have begun to be distributed to Alcain educational centers, so that, on the one hand, they can be tested by teachers to suggest improvements and adjustments, and on the other hand, so that students work in classrooms with the kits as part of their curriculum, which began to be implemented in September.
Through a form, educational centers interested in participating in this initiative can choose the kit they want to request and for what duration: one quarter, two or a full course. In this way, teachers can work cross-functionally with this tool in presenting, examining, assembling and extracting real data in subjects such as environmental knowledge, technology or mathematics.
Another 83 units will be distributed among citizens, of which 31 are environmental instruments, 31 are indoor air quality measurement instruments and 21 are social cooperation instruments.
The initiative, with a 70% subsidy from the Valencian Innovation Agency (AVI), has collaborated with the Innovation Department of the Alcay City Council, Universities, Science and Digital Society. On the presentation day, what the program consists of and the process for registering and participating in the public competition will be explained.
