*3.1.2 Arduino workshops at Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University in Nicaragua*

Engineering using the Arduino microcontroller can also be taught in low resource settings. Since the Arduino microcontroller may be interfaced to a variety of sensors and transducers, there is a large variety of possibilities for performing experiments with these devices. For example, the Arduino microcontroller can be interfaced to a temperature sensor and an LCD display and programmed to show

**Figure 6.**

*Students at a school in Santa Maria Chiqimula, Totonicapan, Guatemala accessing content on a Rachel Pi server.*

the ambient temperature of the environment. Another simple application is to use a light sensor as the input and display the ambient lighting level on an LCD display. More sophisticated applications, such as a line following robot can be produced by interfacing the unit to a mobile robotic platform and using a light sensor to follow a white line painted on the floor [22]. Another somewhat sophisticated application that offers students the opportunity to demonstrate their creativity is a wearable array of colored LEDs that are programmed to light up based on sound volume (through interfacing with acoustic sensors). There is a block programming interface to the Arduino microcontroller, like Scratch, that can be used with elementary/ middle school children who are just beginning to learn basic programming skills for them to perform simple experiments with the Arduino microcontroller.

Bluefields is a town located on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Most of the population in Nicaragua resides in the southwest, Pacific region of the country near the capital city of Managua. This part of the country has the highest economic development in the country while the Caribbean coast is relatively under-developed. The population of Bluefields comprises a variety of indigenous populations who are mostly fisherman. There are many social problems in this region and UNICEF has been working in this part of the country to pilot solutions to address these social problems, particularly as it affects children and youth. Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University (BICU) has as its mission to educate the minority students from the Caribbean coastal region (including Bluefields). Since the social problems affect members of the communities in the indigenous population, UNICEF established an innovation laboratory at BICU to support the university's students and professors to develop innovative solutions to local problems. While there is a computer science program and a computer laboratory at the university, it is relatively ill-equipped. The quality of education and resources in this university are significantly limited compared to the universities on the Pacific side of the country. In collaboration with UNICEF, the author along with his students delivered a two day workshop to the students and professors at BICU in May 2017. The first day of the workshop was focused on the Arduino microcontroller while the second day was focused on using Android Studio for developing mobile phone applications for Android phones [23, 24]. Arduino microcontroller development kits were donated to the university and the students were able to develop applications after the workshops were delivered. While no formal assessment was conducted following the workshops, the informal feedback provided by the students was that they were very excited by the hands-on, practical experience of building electronic circuits.

The students at BICU were so excited about designing and building electronic devices that they launched a robotics club later in 2017. The students from this robotics club competed and won a national robotics competition in 2018 as underdogs in the competition. As winners of the national competition, they were invited to compete in an international competition [25]. Many of the students at BICU were at-risk youth. Witnessing these underserved students' ability to embrace and apply electronics technology to win a national competition clearly demonstrates how the quality of education in low resource settings can be dramatically improved using low-cost hardware and effective mentoring.

### **3.2 Improving quality of health care in low resource settings (UN SDG 3)**

#### *3.2.1 Improving quality of health care in rural Nicaragua*

The quality of health care in rural communities is often very limited. Community health workers (CHWs) with limited medical knowledge and training are often the front-line administrators of local health care to members of their

#### *Using ICT and Energy Technologies for Improving Global Engineering Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100097*

communities. Rural medical clinics may also have limited facilities. Two examples of how quality health care may be improved in these rural settings using technology are described in this section.

The first example focuses on a project conducted in the rural part of northeastern Nicaragua in the area surrounding the town of Waslala. This region of Nicaragua is very poor and the community members in this area tend to be subsistence farmers who grow crops and raise livestock. The mountainous terrain is very rugged with relatively few paved roads as illustrated by the photograph in **Figure 7**.

The author and his students as well as students and professors from the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing at Villanova University, worked with the local Catholic parish and two Nicaraguan universities to develop a telehealth system for this region [26]. The CHWs were trained to make basic measurements of blood pressure, temperature, respirations and, in the case of pregnant women, fundal height. In the case of babies, they were also taught to measure baby head circumference and baby weight. All these trainings were done by the Nursing professors and students from both Villanova University and a partner university, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua (UNAN) branch in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. The CHWs were then trained in texting the collected vital sign data to a central database on a computer server that was located at the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria (UNI) in Managua, Nicaragua. They were also trained in using solar chargers to recharge their cell phones since many of the CHWs did not have access to electricity in their communities. An application program was written using an open-source UNICEF software tool, RapidSMS, that could accept text messages and display them as patient records in a database. This data could be reviewed by trained health care professionals and feedback provided to the CHWs in case a patient needed medical attention. While the initial software application was developed by students at Villanova University, further development of the software was conducted by students from UNI. These students were able to use the open source software to again address real world challenges having understood the context of the communities through engagement with the community members and the CHWs. The students performed competently and really enjoyed the experience of doing hands-on, practical application development using open source software to address a social need.

The telehealth project was further expanded to other regions in Nicaragua. One particular expansion was to the under-served Caribbean coast and students from BICU were engaged in the software development. Since RapidSMS requires significant programming skills (that were somewhat lacking at BICU at the time), a simpler cloud-based software tool, Rapid Pro, also from UNICEF, was used in this application. A comparison of these two software tools for telehealth project development is provided in [27]. Health care software tools are growing extensively

**Figure 7.** *A photograph of farmers in the Waslala region of Nicaragua.*

worldwide to enhance the quality of healthcare in under-served communities. A good example of this is the DHIS 2 health information management system that is being used in many LMICs throughout the world [28].

#### *3.2.2 Teaching students to repair medical equipment in low resource settings*

Repairing medical equipment in low resource settings can be challenging because of the lack of availability of spare parts. This is because, oftentimes, the equipment is old and spare parts may not be available. Furthermore, medical instrumentation can also be difficult to obtain in low resource settings because of lack of funds. In these cases, 3D printing becomes an option to print replacement parts as well as medical instruments. A start-of-the-art review of additive manufacturing of medical instruments was published by a group of researchers from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands [29]. While this paper provides a very comprehensive review of a range of medical instruments that may be 3D printed, for the purposes of low resource settings, some basic tools are shown in **Figure 8**. The figure shows a surgical kit comprising a scalpel, hemostat, forceps, and tweezers. This is particularly important in low resource settings since there may be a very limited supply chain to remote medical clinics. In many developing countries, the medical system is a national system and remote clinics often receive little funding from the central government. Local production of these instruments allows surgeons to be able to have low-cost but very capable tools for their use.

Additionally, local doctors can develop their own instrument designs based on their needs and therefore promotes more local creativity in the design of medical instrumentation.

#### **3.3 Clean water confidence indicator (UN SDG goal 6)**

Chemical and biological contamination of water sources is a major problem all over the world. A low cost means of disinfecting water in remote communities is to put the water into a bottle and place it in the sun for a period of time. In this solar disinfection technique, the UV radiation from the sun kills bacteria in the water resulting in potable water for drinking [30]. Yet, while there are some indicators that can show that the water has received sufficient treatment, these are relatively expensive or may need periodic replacement.

An innovation developed by students at Villanova University uses a UV sensor to accumulate the UV radiation using an Arduino microcontroller. When the

**Figure 8.** *Common medical instruments printed in a 3D printer.*

*Using ICT and Energy Technologies for Improving Global Engineering Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100097*

accumulated UV radiation crosses a threshold, an indicator displays that the water is safe to drink. This system can be used for several bottles at a time in a community setting [31].

Another example of using an Arduino microcontroller to evaluate the quality of water for potable consumption was described in [32]. The authors of this paper from Brunei used an array of sensors, including a turbidity sensor, a total dissolved solids (TDS) sensor, a pH sensor and a temperature sensor that were interfaced to an Arduino unit as shown in **Figure 9**. The unit was tested in a stream on the Universiti Brunei Darussalam campus. Preliminary results of their system show good promise for assessing water quality, but they are planning to upgrade the system to incorporate a Raspberry Pi microcomputer to give remote data collection and more powerful computation capabilities.

## **3.4 Enhancing productivity and economic growth (UN SDG 8)**

### *3.4.1 Soil moisture sensor design*

Precision agriculture is becoming an important area in farming. While this technology has been applied to large holder farms it is still in its infancy regarding small holder farmers. One area of importance in small holder farms in developing countries is only irrigating farms when soil moisture content falls below some threshold value. Combining moisture sensing with drip irrigation technology offers the opportunity to minimize the amount of water used in irrigating farms.

Engineering design instruction at the University of Malawi Polytechnic in Blantyre, Malawi used to almost exclusively focus on paper designs because of the lack of prototyping materials and facilities. This meant that the students would just work on the first half of the design process, i.e. understanding the problem, brainstorm design solutions, settle on a particular solution and then sketch out the solution. They did not get to prototype the design, test and troubleshoot it, or iterate on design improvements [33]. Through a collaboration with Rice University in the US, a maker space facility was established at the University of Malawi Polytechnic in 2016. This Polytechnic Innovation Design Studio (PIDS) includes a variety of prototyping equipment Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, 3D printers, a laser cutter, a CNC machine, and hand tools. These tools are used at all levels beginning in the first-year design classes through to the final year capstone design classes in both the electrical engineering (EE) and mechanical engineering (ME) curricula.

**Figure 9.** *Picture of Arduino-based water quality sensing unit.*

**Figure 10.** *Pre-PIDS circuit prototype using a cardboard backing and organizational structure for the circuit [33].*

**Figure 10** shows a highly rated EE student prototype circuit design prior to the establishment of the PIDS facility. The design includes the circuit components mounted to a cardboard backing. After the PIDS facility was established, the designs were significantly improved. **Figure 11** shows a moisture sensor using an Arduino microcontroller as part of a drip irrigation system to minimize water use in irrigating farms. Clearly, the quality of the design is much more advanced than the prototype circuit shown in **Figure 10**.

An assessment of the quality of the prototype and design process level were conducted for both EE and ME students using a five-point Likert scale. **Figure 12** shows the results of this assessment. The prototype quality has been seen to considerably improve by the presence of the PIDS facility. The change in the design process level was also observed to improve but the upper end of the design process levels did not change.
