Are there young people in your life who might one day be the next programmers and electronics engineers? One of two new educational kits recently unveiled by integrated device manufacturer ST Microelectronics and educational tools specialist Vittascience might be just the thing to help encourage them along those lines.
The STM32 Starter Kit and the IoT Sensors Kit are the newest entries to an educational initiative designed to raise interest in scientific and digital disciplines among young people. The kits, aimed at students and teachers in junior and secondary education, follow last year’s introduction of the Connected Plant and Martian Robot kits. They can be programmed via a free online interface using blocks or Python code, with support for multiple languages. Each kit also includes a set of written teaching resources.
The STM32 Starter Kit is specially designed for those new to electronics and programming. Based on an STM32 board, a 32-bit microcontroller developed by ST Microelectronics, the starter kit enables students to get familiar with the concepts of electronics and programming of microcontrollers — allowing them to take their first steps as programmers and to realize their first project using a microcontroller and various associated sensors. In addition to the STM32 board, the kit includes an LCD screen, programmable LED strip, servomotor, buzzer module and sensors for soil moisture, ultrasonic distance, temperature and brightness.
The IoT Sensors Kit is a bit more advanced: It leverages ST sensors and LoRa technology to enable development of a multi-activity measurement station. Measurements can be stored on a dedicated server where students can follow the evolution of their data and perform future analyses. Like the starter kit, the IoT Sensors Kit also includes an STM32 board, along with a motion MEMS and environmental sensor evaluation board system featuring an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and humidity, pressure and temperature sensors. A programmable LED matrix, a distance sensor and a wireless radio module are also included.
ST Microelectronics and Vittascience presented the educational kits in November at SIDO 2022 in Paris, an annual gathering of experts in IoT, artificial intelligence, robotics and extended reality (XR) solutions and technologies.
