Abstract:

Introduction:
Distance education is growing easier and faster with the widespread use of computers and internet. Moreover, it noticed a diversification in post-secondary student profile. To answer this issue, it appears decisive to create new tools for teachers and learners as remote laboratories and game-like scenarios. Inter mixing face-to-face and distant learning allow continuity between lab work and homework (remotely).
In our opinion, creating a network of these remote laboratories can be very useful to share expensive experiments or equipment between engineering educations training centers.

Software and network methodology:
As we previously presented, a new open source solution has been developed to get rid of proprietaries drivers and software. The aim is both to reduce cost and to ease the solution spreading.
The new open source solution for electronics laboratories has been validated. For example, important functionalities have been created like exporting data and/or pictures for evaluation: students can write down their measurement and results on marked reports.
With the functional and easy to deploy solution, current work focuses on a network of Laborem. The first step is to guaranty an open access to the software. The code is available for everyone on the GitHub platform. However, the PyScada based solution used different programming block and it could be uneasy to configure correctly. To answer the issue, a script has been developed allowing manual or automatic installation therefore everyone can implement by himself a Laborem solution.
Furthermore, a library of measurement instruments is available (function generator, digital multimeter and oscilloscope) to guaranty compatibility with all the different laboratories. The teacher set his work bench clearly using the Human Machine Interface (HMI). For instance, Tektronix and HP oscilloscopes are used and settled in the database.

The remote laboratory box:
Hardware development previously presented in ICERI 2018 has been validated.
A new version of the motherboard will be designed with more Input / Output (I/O) connections. More measurements I/O are needed to interconnect all special characterization like four-probe measurement, as well to perform voltage and current measurement without modifying interconnections in the test bench.
To enhance the network spreading, all the designed and tested plugs are available online on GitHub. There are mainly passive and active filtering electronics circuits using operational amplifiers for now.
Our current work on plugs design is focused on two parts. Firstly, switches are implemented to activate and to deactivate components to modify the circuit. Secondly, piloted components are inserted in the plugs like digital potentiometer.
Our stand-alone solution relies on the “Laborem Box” realized with a 3D printer in our laboratory. A plastic box has been designed to host all the Laborem devices: the motherboard, the single-board computer (SBC) embedding the server and a power supply card.

Conclusion:
The Laborem solution (software and box) has been already installed at the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin). Two more installations are going to be deployed at the University Joseph KI-ZERBO in Ouagadougou. New developments are conducted to increase communication protocols to web services (HTML) or BACnet/IP (automaton). This special feature will allow to work on building energy monitoring based on electrical sensors exchange.

Keywords:

e-learning, game-based learning, industrial engineering, lab work, student motivation, online education, virtual instruments, remote laboratories, SCADA, network.