Abstract:

Nowadays, distance learning has become an acceptable tool for education. There is an increasing need for remote access as a tool to enable extract information, monitor and instantly intervene in production processes in all industrial areas at any time. This thesis deals with the problem of analysis, design of a real-time monitoring and control system mainly for additive manufacturing process with the possibility of sharing devices over remote access to other training organizations or schools. As educational institutions cannot financially own all the different types of equipment, sharing remote access with each other, primarily for teaching purposes, is an option to reduce this deficit. Remote control and monitoring of additive manufacturing with the possibility of emergency shutdown can serve as a demonstration of system functionality. We solved both functions using a Raspberry Pi 4B microcomputer, which we used as a webserver for the opensource software Octoprint operating system, but also as a controller for emergency shutdown controlled via a GPIO bus using a relay module connected to power the devices using available plugins. Connection of the equipment was accomplished by placing the control in a formed panel designed and fabricated at the university using additive manufacturing, which allowed the formed emergency shutdown system to be used on a variety of electrical equipment with standard electrical connections. Furthermore, live transmission of the controlled devices to be monitored by the operating system had to be ensured. Devices at the 3D Technology Center, Institute of Design and Engineering Technology, Faculty of Engineering, Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra were selected for monitoring. Specifically, there are 5 3D printers: Zortrax M200, BCN3D W50, Markforged Mark Two, Phrozen Sonic 4K and Prusa I3 MK3S+. The monitoring was carried out using five 720p USB webcams. To maintain remote access security, a VPN connection was used using the opensource application ZeroTier, where it is possible to control which devices have remote access. The functionality of the system was verified in a remote teaching environment, which also achieved cost savings by sharing remote access to devices.

Keywords:

Distance learning, remote access, VPN.