2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Raspberry Pi Pico is an inexpensive embedded processor board that can be used for various Internet of Things (IoT) projects. It is built around the RP2040 microcontroller. Some key features of the Pico include digital peripherals (e.g., 2 SPI, 2 I2C, 2 UART, and 16 PWM), 23 GPIO pins for digital I/O, 3 ADC inputs, and an on-board LED and temp sensor. MicroPython, a small subset of the Python standard library, is optimized to run on a variety of embedded microcontrollers including the Pico. Thonny is a free download software development environment for writing Python code and downloading it to the Pico.

IoT projects include applications that are broad enough to encompass both electrical and computing disciplines. The goal of this paper is to show a variety of IoT projects that can be used in various embedded courses as end-of-semester projects for both electrical and computer engineering and engineering technology programs. Technology used in these projects can include devices for wireless applications (WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee), sensing applications (temperature, pressure, moisture), video applications (camera), control applications (motor), and displays (LCD, LED OLED). Each project contains a listing of engineering requirements, schematics, snippets of software code, and results. Student assessments will also be included. Additionally, it will be shown how these projects can be used for assessing student outcomes for ABET.