Álvarez Ariza Jonathan, Nomesqui Galvis Christian
Department of Technology in Electronics, Engineering Faculty, Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios-UNIMINUTO, 111021 Bogotá, Colombia.
HardwareX. 2023 Jan 13;13:e00396. doi: 10.1016/j.ohx.2023.e00396. eCollection 2023 Mar.
Currently, remote laboratories have gained relevance in engineering education as tools to support active learning, experimentation, and motivation of students. Nonetheless, the costs and issues regarding their implementation and deployment limit the access of the students and educators to their advantages and features such as technical and educational. In this line, this study describes a fully open-source remote laboratory in hardware and software for education in automatic control systems employing Raspberry Pi and Python language with an approximate cost of USD 461. Even, by changing some components, the cost can be reduced to USD 420 or less. To illustrate the functionalities of the laboratory, we proposed a low-cost tank control system with its respective instrumentation, signal conditioning, identification, and control, which are exposed in this document. However, other experiments can be easily scalable and adaptable to the remote laboratory. Concerning the interface of the laboratory, we designed a complete user-friendly web interface with real-time video for the users to perform the different activities in automatic control such as identification or controller implementation through the programming language Python. The instructions to build and replicate the hardware and software are indicated in the open repositories provided for the project as well as in this paper. Our intention with this project is to offer a complete low-cost and open-source remote laboratory that can be adapted and used for the students, educators, and stakeholders to learn, experiment, and teach in the field of automatic control systems.
目前，远程实验室在工程教育中已成为支持学生主动学习、实验和激发学生积极性的工具，备受关注。然而，其实施和部署的成本及问题限制了学生和教育工作者获取其技术和教育等方面的优势及功能。在此背景下，本研究介绍了一个用于自动控制系统教育的硬件和软件全开源远程实验室，它采用树莓派和Python语言，成本约为461美元。甚至，通过更换一些组件，成本可降至420美元或更低。为说明该实验室的功能，我们提出了一个低成本水箱控制系统及其相应的仪器仪表、信号调理、识别和控制，本文对此进行了阐述。不过，其他实验也可轻松扩展并适配该远程实验室。关于实验室的界面，我们设计了一个完整的用户友好型网络界面，并配有实时视频，供用户通过Python编程语言进行自动控制中的不同活动，如识别或控制器实现。构建和复制硬件及软件的说明在为该项目提供的开放存储库以及本文中均有指出。我们开展此项目的目的是提供一个完整的低成本开源远程实验室，供学生、教育工作者和利益相关者在自动控制系统领域进行学习、实验和教学。
