Contribution to the standard of manufacturing the remote laboratory equipment for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education

Abstract

Manufacturers have been making effort for several years to integrate in their equipment Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for remote access. Therefore, it is possible to command any kind of electronic equipment remotely. We believe that it is possible to find applications in the control of remote lab equipment in the context of e-learning activities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). In addition, more and more companies are interested in manufacturing laboratory equipment; which shows that there is indeed a market in this sector. Our main purpose in this paper is to suggest specifications for a standard manufacturers of laboratory equipment should take into account. When laboratory equipment is being made, the producer should integrate an additional layer to enable the remote user to access and perform eLearning activities on it. This kind of equipment would be used by both traditional and virtual universities. To show relevance and feasibility of our proposal, we embedded an Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) implementation with asterisk open source in TP-Link (TL-MR3020) router with OpenWRT. In fact, OpenWRT is the Linux distribution for embedded devices. To achieve our goal, we described scenarios of hands-on laboratory experiments in telecommunications where students perform activities with real laboratory equipment through internet in real time. We also showed how students control remote equipment through web portal. Preliminary experimental results confirmed that the proposed solution could be integrated in laboratory equipment.