VREL Next Gen Remote Labs

The VREL NextGen distant laboratory with remote access allows one to work with real hardware (not a simulator) and experience real engineering problems. The web browser is all that is needed to interface the lab. Programming the IoT devices is done in the browser, and firmware uploads, restarts, etc., are all handled in the web browser as well. The device's state can be observed directly via video streaming, almost in real-time, and indirectly via the network (figure 1). One or more devices can be booked exclusively for a user. While booked, it is unavailable for other users, but several devices exist. Booking time is limited. Users can choose which laboratory and device to access, then book and use it. Technical documentation and hands-on laboratory scenarios are integrated with the user interface.

Figure 1: VREL NextGen general idea and building components

The VREL NextGen solution comprises one or more hosting servers that provide a user interface via www and several laboratories with hardware located across Europe, currently in Poland, Estonia and Latvia. Public instances are announced via the https://iot-open.eu website. Besides public instances, there are private ones for consortium HE partner's students only. Those servers and related hardware (lab nodes) are not publicly accessible. Public instances sometimes also share resources with consortium HE partner's activities.

It is a rule of thumb that a single laboratory usually shares common space and services. One should refer to the technical description to understand capabilities and physical limitations. Scenarios requiring more than one device can be implemented locally within the limits of the single laboratory composed of many programmable IoT nodes or across space, transferring data through the internet. This enables virtually unlimited integration capabilities using physically separated devices worldwide and integrates other devices and solutions, such as cloud providers' services.

Note, even remotely, you're facing real, physical devices with actuators; thus, you always must consider in your experiments physical phenomena like time, friction, pendulum, and so on.

The following chapters provide a manual for software and hardware. Laboratory scenarios are provided as per laboratory. Integration and local services such as access points, gateways and related technical information (network configuration, credentials, etc) are described per laboratory in the hardware section.