BioLogic: Interactive Biology with M5Stack

I have been engaged in science education through museum events and school programs, sharing the excitement of science and engineering with children. Until now, my projects have leaned heavily on electronics with micro:bit and M5Stack—because, let’s be honest, flashing LEDs and moving motors always steal the show, while plain biology often struggles to catch their attention.

But in fact, my real specialty is biology. For a long time, I have wondered: how can we make the invisible mechanisms of life as eye-catching as a dancing robot? Previously, I built a simple paper chromatography reader with M5Stack. This time, I decided to go bigger—and livelier—by creating three dynamic devices.

The first is a model of mammalian lung respiration. Lungs themselves are quite lazy; they don’t expand or contract on their own. Instead, the diaphragm does all the heavy lifting (literally). I recreated this using a plastic bottle, balloons, 3D-printed parts, and a DIY kit—then gave the diaphragm a boost of power with M5Stack Atom Motion.

The second model demonstrates how human fingers move. Strangely enough, fingers have almost no muscles. Instead, arm muscles pull the strings (or rather, tendons) to move them. I built this mechanism with 3D-printed parts, wires, servo motors, and an M5Stack controller—essentially turning anatomy into an engineering kit.

The third device takes a detour into biochemistry: monitoring CO₂ from living organisms. By pairing an M5Stack Core Basic with a CO₂ sensor and a test tube of yeast, we can watch those tiny fungi breathe, burp, and fill our charts with data.

All three devices are programmed in UiFlow with simple code, making them understandable even for elementary school students. The real advantage of M5Stack is its modular ecosystem: motor drivers and sensors are neatly packaged, so you don’t need to be an electrical engineer to make biology come alive. And since UiFlow feels almost like Scratch, kids can jump straight into physical computing—except now, it’s not just blinking lights, it’s the mysteries of life itself in motion.

This project is still evolving, and I am excited to continue turning new ideas into interactive, hands-on explorations of biology using M5Stack.