Hello everyone.

I welcome you to this introductory blog which I will use for describing my plans as part of Summer of Sensors Design Challenge. I originally did not want to join this competition and I did not apply for it. But later before official challengers were announced It start interest me and after searching for details of offered kits, I was getting more and more enthusiastic in joining at least one category as part of this contest. After analysis I decided that I will join In the Air Tonight category and ordered Renesas ZMOD4510-EVK evaluation kit for evaluating Outdoor Air Quality ZMOD4510 sensor. Later the Kit in this category changed and HS4000-EVK was added to the Kit but because I am non-sponsored challenger, and this evaluation kit is out of stock at all distributors and Renesas website I can’t get it. On the contest main page kits are mentioned with “or” word so I was curious if I can use only ZMOD4510 but later e14phill confirmed me that for satisfying contest requirements I can use only one of the boards. At the time of writing this blog post I am waiting for the Kit which is somewhere between United States and Europe.

Experimenting plan

As part of contest, I want to learn sensor features first and then I want to make IoT project featuring this sensor, internet connectivity and cloud application for visualizing collected data. Because contest is sponsored by Renesas I want to mainly use their products. For my experiments and project, I will use microcontroller from Renesas. I plan to use RA2L1 microcontroller which I received last year as part of RoadTest. If you are interested in more details about this MCU which I will use, then you can read my review here. It is low-power MCU, so it is MCU suitable for long-term loggings and running from battery like I want to do as part of contest. Renesas assigned this sensor to their Quick-Connect ecosystem which allows easily integrate this sensor and some connectivity options to the application reducing need to port library and so on. I never used this ecosystem before, so I want to use it first time as part of this contest.

In first phase I want to learn sensor features and test it. Because it is offered as evaluation kit board, I want to test this board first. On the Renesas website there is software utility for interfacing with evaluation Kit without need of any programming, so for first time I want to test and use this software. After I get overview of sensor capabilities, I will try to test start implementing firmware for Renesas MCU which will interface with sensor using Renesas Quick-Connect. After I learn this, I will start to develop my firmware which will publish measured data from sensor to the cloud. In the meantime, I will develop cloud application (website) for visualizing measured data. At the end of the contest period, I will evaluate collected data and produced charts. All these I will describe with details in blog posts.

Is ZMOD4510 Outdoor or Indoor Air Quality sensor?

As part of contest, I sensed some confusion about offered ZMOD4510 sensor. Contest pages mention this sensor as Indoor Air Quality, but Renesas website mentions it is Outdoor. It would be small surprise what this sensor is used for. I think official Renesas website is correct, and I expect Outdoor Air Quality but in case it is Indoor I still can complete my experiments almost without change.

What’s next?

As I stated above currently, I am waiting for the board. The next blog most probably will be unboxing blog in which I will describe what I received (and I will try answer the question if the sensor is outdoor or indoor :) ). I will describe box contents and my first impressions from the board. Then I most probably will describe my experiences with software utility and then I will start learning Renesas Quick-Connect and connect sensor to the cloud.

Thank you for reading this blog post and stay tuned to my next blog posts.

Next blog: Blog #2: Unboxing Renesas ZMOD4510-EVK