Abstract:

The Engineering Education Laboratories allow students to actively be engaged in their learning, in a space where they can observe, practice and experience the theoretical concepts learned in class. Due to increased student access to higher education, there is a challenge in accessibility to hands-on laboratories, in addition to the high cost associated of implementing new ones. The implementation of remote laboratories allows students and teachers to access experiments using the internet from anywhere and at any time, but these technologies present challenges in security, privacy, intelligence, and scalability.

The present work shows the design and implementation of an architecture for a thermal fluids remote laboratory using an Internet of Things (IoT) approach. The IoT field is specialized in the management of objects (things) and the communication between them. Their protocols and methods can help us in the abstraction of our equipment, and the optimal communication between the different devices that integrate the laboratory.

The Thermal Fluids laboratory is made up of several heat exchangers, pumps, storage tanks and a cooling tower, all these parts can be monitored and controlled by students and teachers who access the scheduled thermodynamics or heat transfer practices through the Moodle platform.

The interfaces of the experiments will be communicated with the Remote Laboratory Management System (RLMS), whose role is the complete management of the laboratory and its resources. Among these resources is the video streaming needed to monitor in real time the laboratory equipment state. This video will be transferred thanks to WebRTC, the real time protocol of the web, and consists of both common video and thermal imaging through thermal cameras.

Keywords:

Remote laboratory, online laboratory, internet of things, engineering education, thermal fluids.