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Designing a Sustainable Smart Home

  • Difficulty: Grade 6-8
  • Time: 60-75 mins
  • Categories: Sustainable Cities

In this lesson, students will explore how smart home technologies contribute to reducing CO2 emissions and building sustainable cities. Using micro:bit sensors, students will design and code an automated smart home model to automate energy-saving behaviours such as automatically adjusting lighting and temperature, ultimately reducing resource consumption.

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What this lesson includes

  • Lesson Content

    Home Automation, Digital Security

  • Real-World Example

    Ecobee Connected Thermostats

  • Coding Tutorial

    Block-based

  • Assessment

    Triangulated Assessment Options

Educator Resources

Looking for more educator resources?

Overview Accordion

Learning Goals

  • Identify key challenges of urban sustainability and the role of smart technology in addressing them.
  • Analyze the impact of energy usage on urban environments and propose energy-efficient solutions.
  • Design and prototype an automated smart home model that:
    • Uses a positional servo motor to unlock a door.
    • Uses a solar sensor to change the LED light value.
    • Uses conditional statements to adjust a temperature variable.

Preparation Accordion

Materials

Get to Know the Content

  1. Make sure you've completed our 'Getting Started with the Climate Action Kit' professional development series
  2. If it has been a while, review the kit components featured in this lesson:
  3. Review the lesson, particularly the following thinking routines from Project Zero (Harvard Graduate School of Education):

Activity Accordion

Big Idea (15 minutes)

Students will:

  • Reflect on real-world energy data by region, including energy consumption and renewable energy adoption statistics per household.
  • Analyze the impact of automated technology and renewable energy on reducing residential emissions.

Take Action (45 minutes)

Students will use the Climate Action Kit to design, build, and code their own automated smart home model. The model will unlock a door, automatically set a thermostat, and adjust lighting conditions depending on the outdoor lighting conditions.

We've provided 3 ways students may build the project to support scaffolding and differentiation in your classroom: 'Use', 'Modify', and 'Create'.*

Activity Description
Use

Students follow a tutorial to build and test an automated smart home model that helps reduce energy consumption.

Success Criteria

I can:

  • build an automated smart home model using the Climate Action Kit
  • name and describe the main parts of my model
  • test how the model uses radio frequency to communicate with two micro:bits
  • discuss what the model does well and how I could make it better

Resources

Tutorial
Final Code
Modify

Students follow a tutorial to add the solar sensor to their automated smart home model to adjust lighting.

Success Criteria

I can:

  • build an automated smart home model using the Climate Action Kit
  • change the code to add new features, like a solar sensor to change the lighting conditions based on the amount of sunlight

Resources

Tutorial
Final Code
Create

Students work in small groups to design, build, and code their own automated smart home model.

Success Criteria

I can build an automated smart home model using the Climate Action Kit that physically:

  • is sturdy
  • has a door

and uses:

  • sensors to detect the light level outside of the house
  • a motor to lock and unlock a door
  • two micro:bits to communicate via radio

Resources

Blank Project

*Irene Lee, Fred Martin, Jill Denner, Bob Coulter, Walter Allan, Jeri Erickson, Joyce Malyn-Smith, and Linda Werner. 2011. Computational thinking for youth in practice. Acm Inroads 2, 1 (2011), 32–37.

Assessment Accordion

Use the following criteria to assess student learning. Students can:

Conversations

  • Can students explain the features of an automated smart home model?
  • Can students explain a civil engineer's role in the design of smart cities?
  • Can students communicate the relationship between home consumption and sustainable cities?
  • Can students explain the real-world quantity represented by the variables that make their model function?
  • Can students explain how the sensors work in their model? (Use, Modify, Create)

Observations

  • Do students methodically test and debug their model? (Modify, Create)
  • Do students make predictions about what certain segments of the code are responsible for and test those predictions (Use, Modify)

Products

  • Students annotate their code to explain how it works (Use, Modify, Create)
  • Students break down problems into smaller subproblems (Modify, Create)
  • Student-created models meet the design criteria outlined in the lesson (Create)

Standards Accordion

Next Generation Science Standards

Grade 6 - 8

MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method form monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.

MS-ETS1-2 Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

MS-PS4-3 Integrate qualitative scientific and technical information to support the claim that digitized signals are a more reliable way to encode and transmit information than analog signals.

Computer Science Teachers Association Standards

Grade 6-8

2-NI-05 Explain how physical and digital security measures protect electronic information.

2-AP-11 Create clearly named variables that represent different data types and perform operations on their values.

2-AP-12 Design and iteratively develop programs that combine control structures, including nested loops and compound conditionals.

2-IC-20 Compare tradeoffs associated with computing technologies that affect people’s everyday activities and career options.

2-IC-23 Describe tradeoffs between allowing information to be public and keeping information private and secure.

Common Core State Standards for Mathematics

Grade 6

6.SP.B.5.B Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context, such as by describing the nature of the attribute under investigation, including how it was measured and its units of measurement.

Grade 7

7.SP.A.1 Understand that statistics can be used to gain information about a population by examining a sample of the population; generalizations about a population from a sample are valid only if the sample is representative of that population. Understand that random sampling tends to produce representative samples and support valid inferences.

Grade 8

8.SP.A.3 Use the equation of a linear model to solve problems in the context of bivariate measurement data, interpreting the slope and intercept

Common Core Technical Career Standards

STEM Cluster: Engineering & Technology Career Pathway

ST-ET 1.3 Use computer applications to solve problems by creating and using algorithms, and through simulation and modeling techniques.

ST-ET 2.1 Select and use information technology tools to collect, analyze, synthesize and display data to solve problems.

ST-ET 3.1 Use knowledge, techniques, skills and modern tools necessary for engineering practice.

ST-ET 3.2 Describe the elements of good engineering practice (e.g., understanding customer needs, planning requirements analysis, using appropriate engineering tools, prototyping, testing, evaluating and verifying).

ST-ET 3.4 Illustrate the ability to characterize a plan and identify the necessary engineering tools that will produce a technical solution when given a problem statement.

ST-ET 4.1 Explain why and how the contributions of great innovators are important to society.

ST-ET 4.2 Explain the elements and steps of the design process and tools or techniques that can be used for each step.

ST-ET 4.3 Describe design constraints, criteria, and trade-offs in regard to variety of conditions (e.g., technology, cost, safety, society, environment, time, human resources, manufacturability).

ST-ET 5.1 Apply the design process using appropriate modeling and prototyping, testing, verification and implementation techniques.

ST-ET 5.2 Demonstrate the ability to evaluate a design or product and improve the design using testing, modeling and research.

ST-ET 5.3 Demonstrate the ability to record and organize information and test data during design evaluation.

STEM Cluster: Science and Math Career Pathway

ST-SM 1.1 Apply science and mathematics concepts and principles to resolve plans, projects, processes, issues or problems through methods of inquiry.

ST-SM 1.2 Use the skills and abilities in science and mathematics to access, share, and use data to develop plans, processes, projects and solutions.

ST-SM 1.3 Use the skills and abilities in science and mathematics to integrate solutions related to technical or engineering activities using the content and concepts related to the situations.

ST-SM 1.4 Explain the role of modeling in science and engineering.

ST-SM 1.5 Explain the use of models and simulation in hypothesis testing (i.e., the scientific method).

ST-SM 1.6 Communicate with others on inquiry or resolution of issues/problems in the global community.

ST-SM 2.1 Demonstrate the ability to recognize cause and effect when faced with assigned projects or issues.

ST-SM 2.4 Predict the outcomes based on data collected in a project or experiment.

ST-SM 2.9 Analyze change as a result of data differences and changing environmental values.

ST-SM 3.1 Evaluate the impact of science on society based on products and processes used in the real world.

ST-SM 3.3 Research how science and mathematics influence the professions and occupations supported by the STEM Career Cluster.

Information Technology Cluster: Programming & Software Development Career Pathway

IT-PRG 4.1 Employ tools in developing software applications.

IT-PRG 6.1 Explain programming language concepts.

IT-PRG 6.3 Demonstrate proficiency in developing an application using an appropriate programming language.

IT-PRG 6.4 Explain basic software systems implementation.

IT-PRG 7.1 Develop a software test plan.

IT-PRG 7.2 Perform testing and validation.