From RGB led laboratory to servomotor control with websockets and IoT as educational tool

Abstract

The technology is advancing so unstoppable even in times of crisis. Sometimes it is difficult to take advantage of it because in no time a new and improved version of the above techniques appears to continue this progress. Within educational technologies aimed at enhancing remote laboratories is the same. From HTTP to websockets communication protocols the technology offers new alternatives to improve bidirectional communications between the client and the server. This paper shows how an integrated development initially HTTP has evolved to lead to a websockets-supported system for controlling a servomotor. The introduction of this communication technology is simplified to allow reuse existing laboratories, thus allowing reuse HTTP previous architectures, hardware and services, including a more advanced environment that uses websockets as communications support. How couldn't it be otherwise, the characteristic of the IoT hardware, in this case Arduino and Raspberry Pi, has been essential in this task. The goal: to reuse existing remote laboratories improve their communication protocol and expand the possibilities of client-server interaction retaining its character as an educational tool.

A systematic literature review on Internet of things in education: Benefits and challenges

“…From a student perspective, IoT will help to communicate with classmates (local or remote; Yin et al, ), share project data, discuss and annotate learning materials in a real‐time (Bin, ), and access the learning resources remotely (e.g., remote labs; Bisták, , Chunxia, ; De la Torre, Sánchez, & Dormido, ; Fernandez et al, ; García, Fernandez, Ruiz, Martín, & Gil, ; Kane et al, ; Lamri et al, ; Tunc, Hariri, Montero, Fargo, & Satam, ). In addition, IoT could also provide support to students with adapted learning resources by integrating content that is based on location, time, date, student‐to‐student interaction, knowledge level, and so forth (Chen, Man, Jin, & Huang, ; J. E. Gómez, Huete, & Hernandez, ; Jeong, Kim, & Chong, ; Lenz et al, ; Ma & Li, ; Möller, Haas, & Vakilzadian, ; Murphy et al, ; Peña‐Ríos, Callaghan, Gardner, & Alhaddad, ; Sula et al, , ).…”

“…However, monitoring can also be applied in other ways. There are studies that focus on monitoring the students and objects in online education and online laboratories settings (e.g., Bin, ; Bisták, ; Fernandez, Ruiz, Gil, & Perez, ; Lamri et al, ; Shi, Qin, Suo, & Xiao, ; Srivastava & Yammiyavar, ; Yin, Dong, Tabata, & Ogata, ). IoT is also being deployed for more pragmatic scenarios in education.…”

Internet of Things: learning and practices. Application to Smart City

“…Gómez et al 2013 proposed an architecture composed of integrates NFC, QR code technology identication and communication protocols (3G or 4G) to interact with physical objects [9]. Fernandez et al 2015 used led RGB, Arduino and Raspberry PI for teaching Internet of Things to children from 10 to 12 years [10]. More recently, He et al [11] developed a learning dispositive for undergraduate students composed of Raspberry Pi Arduino and a set of sensors supporting Zigbee.…”

Cloud-based IoT solution to control and monitor a psychrometric laboratory in a Peruvian University

“…Various publications of educational remote laboratories have been found in the literature, which are managed through a web interface using the WebSocket protocol for real time updates. In [4] and [5] the control of mechanical devices is shown using NodeJS as backend and socket.io for bidirectional and real-time communication between the client (students) and the server. In [6] and [7] remote labs are presented using role access control and MySQL for the persistence layer.…”