Implementation of an Arduino Remote Laboratory

with Raspberry Pi
Atilano Fernández-Pacheco, Sergio Martin, Manuel Castro
Electrical & Computer Engineering Department
UNED - Spanish University for Distance Education
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Abstract—Popularity of Arduino has grown in the last years, • Describe the state of the art of remote laboratories.
mainly as part of the Internet of Things, which is producing a
relevant impact in several economic sectors (industry, • Show the architecture of an Arduino remote lab based
transportations, energy, agriculture, home automation, etc.). on Raspberry Pi.
Several national and European policies have been set-up to train
the EU companies to the adoption and diffusion of the IoT
• To show the possibility of using this kind of
technologies. In this paper, we describe the development of a laboratories in Internet of Thing (IoT).
remote lab of Arduino to give support to on-line IoT learning
II. STATE OF THE ART
experimentation environments, which are very important to
provide quality on-line education programs on IoT. According to the Gartner Curve, IoT is an emergent
technology near to expectation peak, as it is possible to see in
Keywords—Remote lab; Arduino; Raspberry; IoT Figure 1 [4].

I. INTRODUCTION
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assimilate correctly the theory concepts and can acquire skills
that they will be able to use in his professional career when
finish his degree [1] [2]. Therefore, these labs are essential for
the development of the students and the university must assure
the amount, variety and quality of the practicum. Traditionally,
laboratory practicum has been done in the classroom. The
schedule has stipulated previously.
Try to organize laboratory practicum in group as small as
possible in order that teachers can teach with personalized
attention and students use all devices and instruments correctly
and safety. Moreover, make sure to guarantee the maintenance
of equipment and devices that have been used during the
practicum.
Nowadays, it is more common to offer students the highest
flexibility when they are carrying out their studies and they can Fig.1.Emerging Technologies according to Garnet Curve [4].
choose the best moment during the day to study in order to
work and study at the same time and to balance the family life. IoT is a concept that is referenced to digital connection
In this context, it is a vital importance for us to get the remote among common objects with the Internet [5]. For instance, in a
laboratory ready where student can access on-demand to supermarket all products would be connecting to the Internet
resources. through identifier sensor. With this solution, problems such as:
break of stock, food expired and exactly number of the
Other fundamental point is that remote laboratories
products eliminated.
maximize the use of this type of laboratories which operative
24/7 and are accessible from anywhere. With this, we optimize Nowadays, the scope of IoT has been extended with
from economical point of view. As they are accessible from advanced connection of devices, systems and services that goes
anywhere, it is possible to offer higher education to a lot of beyond the classic M2M (Machine to Machine).
people, which would be impossible in other context [3].
IoT not only has a huge social impact, but can also support
This paper is intended for students, teachers and the employability and boost the competitiveness of European
professionals who are interested in remote learning and companies. It is widely considered as one of the most
technology laboratories. important key drivers for the implementation of the so-called
Industry 4.0 and for the digital transformation of the
The main goals of this paper are:

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2019 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)
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companies. Relevant impact of this technology is expected in a • Increase the maximum amount of students who would
wide range of sectors [6]. use these labs at greater extent to the fact that there are
no space restrictions. This factor has a limitation that is
The economic importance of IoT is underlined in several
the number of concurrent users.
studies: to give an order of magnitude, a recent study of the
European Committee estimates that the market value of the IoT • To increase the number of students who can use this
in the EU will exceed one trillion euros in 2020 [7]. equipment to reduce the cost per student.
The European Commission is aware of the great potential The principal qualities that must accomplish a remote
of IoT and in the past has supported several projects for the laboratory are [9]:
development of IoT-based applications, protocols and policies
for the secure, safe and privacy preserving deployment, mainly • High-availability. One strong point is the possibility to
in the FP7 and Horizon 2020 programs. Actually, the EC plans be used without restriction of time and on-going
to unveil a strategy for IoT, launching a series of large-scale availability. This point is essential when laboratory is
pilots with an investment of more than 100 million euros [7]. being designed and planned its architecture.
The huge expected growth of IoT in the next years and the • Concurrency. The labs have to support the fact that
planned investments in the sector foresee a high demand of different users use it simultaneously; all users must be
professionals in the sectors. According to a report from the working at the same time. Otherwise, there will be a
Vision Mobile projects, while in 2014 just 300,000 developers queue of requests and the system will take time to
contributed to the IoT, 4.5 million developers by 2020 are process.
expected, reflecting a 57% compound annual growth rate and a • Low operating cost. These kinds of labs have to be
massive market opportunity [7]. European Universities and used continuously so its construction and its operation
VET providers are not ready to face this educational challenge. must cost at the lowest as possible.
Very few European Universities and VET providers offer
courses on IoT nowadays. On the contrary, US Universities • The remote lab must have the control of avoiding a
and private companies regularly offer courses on IoT to face wrong use. In other words, the system must try to be
the demand of professionals. preparing for one bad use, which can cause damage to
devices.
Therefore, it is important that education centers will be
supplied of labs where the students can learn skills about this The use of remote labs about IoT in on-line and blended
technology with the objective to improve the skills of students training programs will ensure good competences
and his future employment. assimilation by students.
There are a lot of remote laboratories around the world. The remote lab shown below in this document allows the
These labs are not circumscribing to specific topic else they students to experiment the Internet of Things.
cover a lot of knowledge areas. For instance, programing,
control system, etc. IV. ARCHITECTURE
All labs try to move students closer to where they are able In this section, architecture will be explained in the
to carry on theoretical knowledge, which students have learnt different parts. The main device is an Arduino board that is
previously so they would experiment and would check results. connected to others devices such as: led cube, mechanic crane,
sensor etc. Moreover, compilation, load and execution of
Besides, as a general rule, these labs have an access profile. sources codes are run by the Arduino board.
There are two security levels: which user can access and what
each user can do in the application. The connection between Raspberry PI and Arduino is
through USB port. The number of device which can be
Moreover, all labs must introduce controls that try to avoid connected to Raspberry PI will be limited for the number of
errors to a greater or lesser extent and protect equipment and USB port available.
devices. In lab software, without hardware elements, these
controls must not allow impossible use cases to execute. Administrator needs to setup each environment. For that it
is necessary to add one line for each environment. The format
These kind of remote labs have been increased in other line is the next:
Spanish university such as UPV/EHU that has been ready for
students to use. Yet, it is not difficult to find dozens of remote “Port, name device, microprocessor, programmer, baud,
labs around the world [8]. default program”

These remote laboratories have a lot of advantages: Each parameter is detailed next:

• There are no time restrictions. • Port - It is the device file which be used by
Arduino board.
• It’s possible to include easy controls to avoid wrong
uses, which might be potentially dangerous for the • Name device - It is the name of the device that
equipment. users will visualize in the web site.

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 • Microprocessor - In this parameter is indicated the
type of Arduino processor.
• Programmer - In this parameter is indicated the
type of programmer which will be used in the
connection.
• Baud - It is necessary define the connection
velocity. This parameter is very important because
a bad configuration can cause errors when the
program is being loaded to device.
• Default program - When the user’s time has
expired is necessary to reset the device in order to
be able to be used by another user. This program
must setup the device with its default
configurations.
An example of environment configuration is as follows,
where two Arduino boards are connected to the server. The
first one is a an Arduino 3D LED cube based on an Fig.2 Remote lab architecture [3]
ATmega328p. The second one is a sensors lab based on
ATmega2560:
/dev/ttyUSB0,Cubo Arduino,atmega328p,arduino,57600,ini_cubo.hex
/dev/ttyACM0,Sensores,atmega2560,wiring -D,115200,ini_sensores.hex

Therefore the system administrator only has to add one line

and plug the new Arduino board. In that moment, users will be
able to use that device. Thus the lab helps users with a full
environment where the development is tested and the behavior
is visualized. Besides, if devices send information about his
state, IoT laboratory is deployed.
Arduino MKR1000 Wi-Fi is the board that has been chosen
because this board has been designed especially to IoT. This
board has a more powerful processor that Arduino Uno or
Mega. Besides, it has a Wi-Fi WINC15000 chip to connect to
the Internet, which allows sending data to devices from the
Internet.
Fig.3 GUI of Remote Laboratory
Arduino board with SIM and GSM/GPS connection would
have been chosen but this option was dismissed because this
board costs more plus a recurrent cost to send data through Each device needs to be set up with a specific
SIM card. In addition, the device is used inside the laboratory configuration. Only it is necessary to include file information
with Wi-Fi. Moreover, WIFI signal has better stability and this about: processor, port, device name, bauds and define a default
point is fundamental to increase user experience. configuration in one configuration
On the other hand, Raspberry is the hardware that has been After each execution, the system loads a default
chosen as an application server. The reasons are very similar configuration, which leaves the device ready for the next
which have been showed previously. It is possible to deploy a execution in the board. This point is essential in order to assure
full server with a lot of performance and a lot of interesting the maintenance of the infrastructure.
characteristics with a reduced cost. Beside, community
development of Raspberry is very great. Raspberry is based on Although the system can support a lot of users
Linux system for that it is very easy to deploy a web server. concurrently, only one can be executing the code in the board
Other interesting characteristic is the possibility to migrate with at the same time. For that reason, it is necessary to introduce
simple steps as a traditional Linux server. So Raspberry Pi is mechanisms of synchronization in order to regulate the
perfect to deploy a web sensor [10]. different executions.

In addition, the architecture (Figure 2) adds one WebCam Thus, when one user is executing his program, the system is
so that student could visually check the behavior of the test, blocked during three minutes. During that time, if other user
which the student has done (Figure 3). This point is very tries to execute another program, he cannot do it and the
important because if you visualize the testing, you will resolve system shows a notification indicating the time that the device
issues more easily. Moreover, it helps the student to get closer will be unlocked.
to the laboratory.

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2019 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)
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 It is easy to check that the architecture is simple but robust Fidalgo, A., Lima, D., Temporão, G., Alves, G., “Impact of a
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