05x03 - Super Sensors

[bunniefuu]

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] Come on!

[girls] ♪ When I need help and I've got a question ♪

♪ There's a place I go for inspiration ♪

♪ Got to get to the web, check the girls' investigation ♪

♪ What girls? ♪

♪ SciGirls! ♪

Whoo!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] I need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

Come on!

♪ You've got to log on, post ♪

♪ Upload, pitch in ♪ Yeah!

♪ Want to get inside a world that's fascinating? ♪

♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting ♪

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] SciGirls!

Jake?

Uh, Jake?

[snoring]

[cr*ck]

[both yelling]

[Jake] Izzie.

You're not the legendary Bakersfield Bigfoot.

[Izzie] Uh, last time I checked, no,

because he doesn't exist.

[Jake] Really? Look!

[Izzie] Uh, half-eaten apple?

[Jake] Look at the teeth marks.

[Izzie] Are tiny?

[Jake] Exactly.

Everyone knows the Bakersfield Bigfoot

has tiny teeth.

[Izzie] If there was

a Bakersfield Bigfoot.

Tiny teeth seem unlikely.

[Jake] But what if it's him, Izz?

Seeing him is on my bucket list.

I've been camping out for days,

but I can't stay awake to catch him.

[Izzie] Or her.

The Bakersfield Bigfoot could be a girl.

Oh, what am I saying?

There is no Bakersfield Bigfoot.

Look, I don't believe in the Bakersfield Bigfoot,

but I do believe in asking for help

to prove you wrong.

SciGirls, we need you.

[upbeat music]

Hmm, no.

Hmm. This looks promising.

[cheerful music]

[Trinity] I saw a couple of birds and two deers.

It's the Hollywood sign! That is such a good view.

[giggling]

[Karen] Griffith Observatory.

[Rihighna] I love learning about space there.

My name is Rihighna.

I know Karen and Trinity

because we all go to school together.

I think space exploration is cool

because you can always find out something new.

[Trinity] Should we keep going?

I am Trinity.

What I like about Engineering

is trying things over and over again.

You can always improve on something.

[birds squawking] There are so many birds!

Cuh-caw, cuh-caw!

[Karen] My name's Karen.

The thing that I like about science

is that there's a lot of hands-on things,

and the thing that I like about technology

is that you can see new things happen.

[Rihighna] L.A. is amazing.

[Karen] Yeah, it is.

♪ ♪

[Karen] Wow!

So today we're at J.P.L.

[Rihighna] This is so exciting.

[Karen] I was excited

because I've never been to anything related to NASA,

and we got to meet one of their engineers.

[Janelle] Welcome to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

My name's Janelle,

and I work as an instrument operations engineer.

[Rihighna] She uses instruments,

like cameras, to collect data.

[Janelle] Here, we're primarily responsible for building robots

that do space exploration,

and bring science data back here to Earth.

So over here, you'll see the Mission:[span tts:fontStyle="italic"] Cassini,

and this is actually a project that I worked on

when I started working here at J.P.L.

[man] Two, one, and liftoff

of the[span] Cassini[span tts:fontStyle="italic"] spacecraft on a billion-mile trek to Saturn.

[Janelle] What's amazing about[span] Cassini

is that it went to Saturn and it orbited for about years.

My job on the[span] Cassini[span tts:fontStyle="italic"] mission

was to operate the cameras.

So how do you take a picture

when[span] Cassini[span tts:fontStyle="italic"] is far, far away at Saturn?

You send commands to it.

The instrument receives them and then learns,

"Oh, you want me to take five pictures at this time?"

It takes those five pictures,

and then it sends that information back to us

here on Earth where we can look at those images.

♪ ♪

This is a moon called Enceladus.

Cassini[span tts:fontStyle="italic"] actually found out something game changing

about this moon,

that most likely there is water

running under the surface of this moon.

[Trinity] If there's water,

does that mean that there's life?

[Janelle] That's what a lot of us

are dying to know.

If there is water, then there could be life.

We want to know more.

I've gotten to use different types of cameras

on a couple of missions here at J.P.L.

On the right, you have the visible light.

This is what me and you see every day.

And then on the left, we have the infrared light.

And infrared tells us the temperature of the things

that we're looking at.

Your foreheads are white, right, in your face?

It's 'cause you're really hot there.

And then, like, your shirt's cooler than your face, right?

That's where you got the greens and blues.

This is actually J.P.L.'s indoor Mars yard.

It's an area where we can test our models

of landers and rovers.

[Rihighna] They set up with sand and rocks

to simulate how it would be on a planet.

[upbeat music]

[Trinity] We drove a rover

to simulate what it's like to drive on different planets

and how it's challenging to do it from so far away.

Like start turning around...

It was challenging because we weren't able to look at

the rover while we were driving it.

[cheers]

[Janelle] Yeah, great job!

How was it?

[Rihighna] Fun. [Trinity] It's fun.

[Karen] It's fun but it's challenging.

[Janelle] It's really rewarding

when you do a good job and you can finish like you girls did.

♪ ♪

We're talking to satellites and spacecraft at Earth,

moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,

and even out of our Solar System.

[Karen] Being here was kind of like a dream come true

'cause I got to actually see a branch of NASA.

[Janelle] So how did you guys like it?

[girls] It was so much fun.

[Rihighna] After the tour, we asked Janelle

if she could help us out in building something

with cameras that could help our community.

[Janelle] Cameras, similar to the ones I use in space,

can be used here on Earth.

I have a friend who would love your help.

[all] Dare mighty things.

♪ ♪

[Trinity] Janelle was telling us about a scientist

that needed our help.

So we went to the Natural History Museum

to get an idea of what kind of project

we want to do with the camera.

[Miguel] Welcome to the P- exhibit.

I'm Miguel.

[Rihighna] Miguel taught us that cameras are helpful

to biologists because you could find out

what animals are in certain areas.

[Miguel] Wildlife biologists use a special tool

called a camera trap,

which is a motion-activated camera

to document wildlife that are harder to document

because they come out at night when we're usually asleep

and they tend to be more shy and elusive.

[snarling]

One great example of what can come

of camera trapping is P-.

P- stands for Puma ,

meaning that he was the nd puma

studied in the local L.A. area.

[Trinity] It was surprising that

P- was in Griffith Park

because mountain lions are usually found

in the Santa Monica mountains

and would have to cross

the freeways to get to Griffith Park.

[Rihighna] P- is creating awareness

by showing that community members

and wild animals can live in the same area.

♪ ♪

[Miguel] Here we've arrived at

one of our camera trap locations

that's helping us monitor wildlife

that's coming through the nature gardens here at night

when the museum is closed.

[Karen] We decided to make a camera trap using things

that you can get around your community.

[Miguel] Some environmental factors

that you wanna consider--

Make sure that your camera is weather-proof,

at least to some extent.

[Karen] What else should we be thinking about

when building the camera?

[Miguel] It's good to have a camera

that's set up with infrared flash if you can

because that flash usually isn't seen by the animal,

and even if it is, it really doesn't bother the animal

or feel--make it feel vulnerable.

[Trinity] Thank you so much for your help.

We're gonna go design our camera.

[Rihighna] Scientists can't go everywhere,

and they would like to know what animals

are in different communities.

[Karen] If community members

record wildlife using a camera,

they can help scientists know what's going on

on their property.

[Trinity] Hi, I'm Trinity.

I'm and I'm in th grade.

This is my family. This is my brother.

This is my mom. [Mom] Hello!

[Trinity] My dad. [Dad] Hey there.

[Trinity] I also like to cook.

I also like to do my hair

when I don't have, like, any homework to do.

So this is Momo.

He likes to wear different stuff like ties.

So for one of my school projects,

we had to enlarge objects.

So I chose a book.

Bye. See you again soon.

Say bye, Momo.

♪ ♪

[Janelle] Hi, everybody!

[girls] Hi, Janelle.

[Trinity] We came to my house to start working on our design.

[Janelle] I brought some components

that you guys might find useful.

So let's go check it out.

[Rihighna] The first step we did

was looking at the different parts we can add.

[Karen] Janelle showed us some of the cameras.

We had three to choose from, and we chose the IR camera

'cause it makes the animals less scared

than a usual flash.

[Rihighna] And we used a motion sensor

so that it could trigger the camera

to take a photo and video.

If we had a camera without a motion sensor,

the camera would be going all night,

and you'll have hours and hours of just, like,

grass or just the scenery.

[Janelle] This is actually a small computer,

and that'll act as the brains of our operation.

[Trinity] The Raspberry Pi is a computer that we can program.

[Karen] We used it because we needed to use something

that would send commands to the camera and to the sensor.

[Trinity] We decided to draw our diagram

to get an idea on how all the parts will go together.

Connecting to the IR camera, which is the big camera.

[Rihighna] I basically had the same thing as you,

but upside down.

[Janelle] Let's start hooking stuff together.

♪ ♪

[Trinity] First the blue.

[Janelle] Now we have the motion sensor.

[Trinity] Five volt.

The green into the out ground.

[Janelle] Go ahead, let's power it on.

[cheering]

[Rihighna] Hands in! [Trinity] Okay.

[Janelle] Great, everyone.

[Trinity] We decided to start pseudocode.

It's code, but we use everyday language.

[Janelle] What do we want our computer to do?

[Karen] In the night, nothing's like moving,

but then if it senses something in front of it,

then it will, like, turn, like, the camera on.

[Rihighna] The benefit of writing pseudocode

before programming on the computer

is so that you have a clear definition

and an understanding of what you want the camera

and the motion sensor to do.

[Karen] So you would say like we want the camera

to record something for five seconds and then stop.

And then once we had that done,

we could easily do it in code form.

[Janelle] Doing this will make it so much easier

to put this into Python.

[Trinity] The computer language that we are using is Python.

[Janelle] Believe it or not, in the engineering world,

people don't like to start from scratch.

[Karen] We didn't have to start

writing our code from scratch.

We got to use a website

that already had a code that existed,

and then we could modify it

so we could use it for our camera trap.

[Janelle] It's really nice to be able to have

a starting point and use those instructions

to help you move forward.

[Trinity] Open IDLE to go to the menu

and choose programming.

[Rihighna] We had to modify the code

for the different sensors.

[Trinity] Click on file

and this should open up a second window

in which you can create your code.

Number one, write some code to set up your sensor

and the GPIO .

[Rihighna] First we tested the motion sensor.

[Janelle] So this says that it's plugged into a GPIO ?

[Rihighna] Oh, wait, no. It's .

[Janelle] It's ! [Karen] Oh!

[Janelle] So let's edit this to instead say instead of .

[Rihighna] And it would turn on when it sensed motion,

and it would turn off when it didn't.

[Janelle] All your code looks great,

and I think we're ready to test it.

Congrats, guys!

[cheers, laughter]

[Rihighna] Hello, my name is Rihighna,

and I'm years old and also in the th grade.

This is my beautiful mom.

One of my favorite things to do

is build different contraptions

like this Ferris wheel right here.

I love to dance.

I study over ten different dance styles.

Another thing I like to do is to make slime.

[goofy music]

Another thing I like to do is to practice calligraphy.

♪ ♪

Bye!

[upbeat music]

[Trinity] We set up our yard like the Mars yard at J.P.L.

where we had several different tests.

[Rihighna] To test our IR camera,

we used a box to simulate the nighttime.

[Trinity] We should put the box on

to make sure that it's-- there's no motion detected.

[Karen] Yeah, there. [Trinity] No motion detected.

[Karen] Oh, okay.

[Rihighna] And then we also used a wind-up toy chicken.

[Trinity] Put it inside the box.

[Karen] We winded up the toy, put it under the box,

and then the chicken started walking.

It's so cute!

The--the--it turns, like, black and white.

[Rihighna] Yeah, so the IR works.

[Karen] It goes, like, black and white.

[Trinity] The most fun part of building the camera?

When we were testing the motion sensor

to see how far it could go.

feet, .

[Karen] Yeah, feet.

[Rihighna] Why don't you go all the way back?

[Trinity] I didn't know how sensitive

the motion sensor was.

[Karen] The motion sensor can detect everything in the yard.

That's great.

[Trinity] If it was in the dark,

you could see something feet away.

That was very interesting.

♪ ♪

[buzzing]

[Rihighna] For the case for our camera,

we used a plastic food container.

[Trinity] Yeah, I think that'll fit.

[Rihighna] So that it could be element-proof,

and we also cut holes in it for the camera lens,

the chord, and a tripod stand.

We decided to use a tripod to mount the camera.

It's very easy to adjust the angle of the camera.

[Trinity] We should probably test it on a smaller animal.

[suspenseful music]

We set up several different tests,

one which we attracted an animal,

which was my dog.

We just put food in front of the camera

to see if he would come

and if the motion sensor got him.

He did not trust us at first, and then he went and got it.

And the camera got him eating and so did the motions sensor.

Good job, Momo. Good job!

Good job.

Okay, I think we're ready to set up our camera.

[Janelle] This spot over here?

[Trinity] Yeah, this one right here.

[Janelle] So why'd you guys choose this spot?

[Trinity] Well, because, uh,

you can see almost the entire yard from this point,

and it also has a little bit of shade.

A good thing about the tripod is that it's adjustable.

So you can move it up higher

if there's maybe a taller animal in the neighborhood.

[Janelle] I think it's a good spot.

[Rihighna] We also tilted the camera a little down so--

because the animals will be more down here

because you won't have huge pumas out here.

[Trinity] Yeah. [Janelle] Hopefully not.

[Trinity] I'm gonna make sure to plug it in

before it gets dark.

We made two cameras to test.

One here at my house and one at the Natural History Museum.

[Karen] This is milkweed.

And we decided to put it in, like, a little alley.

[Miguel] You can see this is a nice clear path

for animals to use.

[Karen] That was far from where people walked.

So if an animal comes in that little alley,

it would be left alone and not bothered by any humans.

[Rihighna] We thought animals would go there

because we also saw scat, and we also saw eaten fruit.

And we know that if there is eaten fruit

and it wasn't eaten completely,

the animal might come back to finish it.

[Miguel] What direction would you want to face it?

[Karen] Um... [Trinity] Maybe, like,

in the corner and face it outward.

[Karen] Put it here? [Rihighna] Yeah.

[Trinity] So we should probably tilt it down.

[Rihighna] Good job, everyone.

♪ ♪

[laughter]

[Izzie] Oh, awesome!

I borrowed this equipment from the lab at school.

Come on, let's make a camera trap.

[click] Oh, uh, hand me that monitor.

[Jake] Here's the sensors. [Izzie] Got it.

[Jake] Keyboard. [Izzie] Got it.

[Jake] Mouse.

[Izzie] [giggles] Got it.

We have a brand new camera with motion sensor.

Oh, I'm so excited to write the code!

[Jake] I'm excited to catch the Bakersfield Bigfoot.

[keys clacking]

[Izzie] All right, the code's written

and the computer is hooked up.

[Jake] Izz, did I grow into my cheekbones?

Like seriously, I look good.

[Izzie] [chuckles] Come on, supermodel.

Let's test it.

Camera's ready!

Cue cheese, and action!

[Jake] Go, boy!

[Izzie] [gasps]

The sensor light came on.

[Jake] It worked!

By tomorrow, we'll have seen the Bakersfield Bigfoot!

[Izzie] By tomorrow,

we'll know if there's a Bakersfield Bigfoot.

[Janelle] Hi, ladies.

[girls] Hi!

[Janelle] Hopefully your cameras were able to see

some pretty cool stuff.

[Trinity] I'm really excited to see what we got on camera.

I was kinda hoping to see animals.

[Karen] I think the white is when it waits.

Oh, my gosh! [Janelle] It's a lot.

Did you see anything?

[Karen] I don't know. I think I saw an arm.

[Janelle] Oh, no. That's just a smudge.

[girls] Yeah.

[Janelle] Maybe like a flash. [Karen] Like that?

I don't see anything. There are so many videos.

[Trinity] All I see is the grass.

[Rihighna] It was kind of disappointing,

but at least we got some footage of, like, an animal.

[Karen] It's in the morning!

[giggling]

[Rihighna] It was Momo eating, but still footage!

So at least we know it was sensing something.

In the first night of testing at the museum...

[gasping]

[Karen] Oh, my gosh! [Rihighna] Oh!

To see that footage, it was very exciting.

Oh, we saw glowing eyes.

[Janelle] It's big. [Trinity] Yeah.

[Rihighna] You could see, like, a shadow of it too.

[Trinity] Yeah.

[Janelle] Is this a type of animal

that you guys normally see during the day?

[Karen] No. [Rihighna] Mm-mmm.

[Janelle] That's really clear.

[Trinity] We saw a possum just walking around,

then picking up and dropping an orange.

[Janelle] Would you girls call that a success?

[girls] Yes. [Janelle] Yes?

We still have another night to get some footage.

So what can you think of to make our chances better?

[Karen] Is there a way to reduce how many videos

we have to look through?

[Janelle] Yeah, in fact, right now,

the videos are taking about ten seconds.

[Trinity] After seeing the test footage from the first night,

we decided to add pictures

before and after the video started.

and then we also increased the time for the video

to seconds.

[Janelle] Let's add a new line to take a picture

before we take the video.

If you can copy this whole line right here...

[Karen] Something that I find challenging

about computer programming is that if you make, like,

one small mistake,

like if you don't put a period in its place

or if you don't put a dash in its place,

you have to go through every single line of code

to check if it's right.

[Janelle] We want to change that to say

.J-P-E-G, .jpeg.

Now our code is gonna take pictures!

[Karen and Trinity] Yay!

[Rihighna] The improvements that we decided to make

to the camera were it would take a photo

before the video starts and after the video starts,

just in case we missed the animal in the video.

[Karen] Instead of putting our camera on a tripod,

we decided to put it on, like, piles of bricks

and put some, like, little woodchips.

We would get the whole body

because it was more level to its height.

[Rihighna] For the second night of testing

at Trinity's house,

we decided to put it in her front yard

where it's more accessible for animals.

and we put it in the very corner of the front yard

so that we could see the whole yard.

Can't wait to see what we get.

[Trinity] Yeah.

[Karen] Hi, my name is Karen.

I'm years old and I live in Los Angeles.

This is my sister, Kayleen. She's five.

[Kayleen] Hi!

[Karen] I have been doing music for six years.

[guitar plays]

This is my mom. Her name is Arcelia.

She, um, is right now cooking nopales,

and she's been the one that has, uh, pushed me

to do things that I didn't know that I could do.

[Arcelia] I'm really proud of her.

[speaking Spanish]

Bye, everyone!

[Trinity] Come on, I can't wait to see what we get.

[Karen] Yeah, me too.

Maybe this time we'll be better

with the pictures and the video.

We went to the museum to look at

the second night of footage.

[Miguel] Oh, there's some eye shine.

[Karen] First we saw two little eyes

come popping out of nowhere.

[Rihighna and Miguel] Oh!

[Karen] It's Momo! [Trinity] Momo.

It was Momo again.

[Miguel] So that's a perfect height.

If that dog is triggering the camera,

then it will trigger animals about that same size.

So it looks like it's working perfectly.

[Karen] On the second night of recording at the museum,

we got a lot more possum footage.

Oh my--you can actually see the body.

[Trinity] We saw another possum.

We saw it walk away, it was kind of strutting.

I think it worked a lot better

because you got to see the whole animal.

A couple of times it just came up and was like right there.

It was sniffing the camera or it brushed the camera.

It was really cool.

[Miguel] How about you display what you made

here at the museum?

[Trinity] Miguel invited us to go

to the Natural History Museum in a couple of days

to present our camera trap to friends and family,

and also visitors at the museum.

[Miguel] Great job!

♪ ♪

[Rihighna] Today we are at my house

working on our museum display.

[Karen] For our name, we use an acronym

that stands for each of our names

just like NASA uses acronyms for naming their robots.

It stands for Technology, Research, Knowledge.

[Trinity] It's also Trinity, Rihighna, and Karen.

[Rihighna] Which way do we want the poster?

Like this?

[Karen] Trinity is choosing, like, the videos that we got

really good footage in,

and me and Rihighna are doing the poster.

♪ ♪

[Trinity] We are making a website

so that people in our communities

will have an idea on how to build their own camera traps.

[Rihighna] Look, I think we're ready.

[Karen and Trinity] Yeah!

[Rihighna] I'm so excited. Yeah.

[Karen] I'm excited to show what we've done at the museum

because I want to show what I've learned,

and I want to show what a wildlife camera is.

Yay, it works!

[Rihighna] We decided to wear NASA shirts

because that was the first place we actually learned

about how scientists used cameras for research.

[Trinity] I think something that helped us keep on going

was the fact that we could make our own camera

and present it to everyone.

So that's what it would look like.

It would be black and white.

[Karen] And then this is a motion sensor that we also use.

[girl] I have chickens.

So if we had a nighttime camera,

I could know if there's anything

endangering my chickens.

[Karen] I hope that the people who came to see our project

that they've learned how they can make something

that's not that hard to make.

[Rihighna] To share our research

and to share our project feels really great.

First, we had to do pseudocode,

and then we had to make that into Python.

Some people were asking for our link

so that they can make their own.

I felt really great about that.

[Miguel] I just want to quickly stress

how important what you're doing is and how inspiring it is,

especially for local community members that are your age.

Thank you! Good job.

[Rihighna] I feel like our project will really help

a lot of people and will really help our community.

Thank you very much for coming!

[Janelle] Oh, you're welcome! [Janet] Yeah, thank you!

[Janelle] Girls, I'm so impressed

by everything you did.

Age doesn't matter when it comes to be able

to work with electronics and build wildlife cameras

and anything else you put your mind to.

[Karen] I want to let kids know

that they can make technology at home.

I know it looks really hard, but once you understand it

it will all make sense.

[Trinity] I think technology does help us

understand the world and the universe better.

[girls] Dare mighty things!

[laughter]

♪ ♪

[Izzie] Wow, Jake,

your backyard really comes alive at night.

[Jake] Ooh, I see movement by the apples!

This is it, Izz!

The moment we've been waiting for!

The big hairy...

[squirrel chitters]

An adorable squirrel? Aww!

[Izzie] [chuckles]

Well, Jake, it's settled.

There is no Bakersfield Bigfoot.

[Jake] Just because we didn't capture him...

[Izzie] Or her.

[Jake] Doesn't mean there isn't a Bakersfield Bigfoot.

We live to wonder another day!

Look!

Holes in the ground.

Bakersfield Bigfoot struck again!

[Izzie] Oh, Jake.

♪